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THE  CELTIC  DAWN 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NXW  YOKE  ■    BOSTON  •   CHICAGO   •  DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •  BOMBAY   •  CALCUTTA 
HELBOUKNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

A  SURVEY  OF 
THE  RENASCENCE  IN  IRELAND 

1889-1916 


BY 
LLOYD  R.  MORRIS 


Nrw  fork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1917 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYMGHT,  1917 

By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  January,  191 7. 


Colleg* 

9  7S^ 


PROFESSOR  JOHN  ERSKINE, 

POET,  PHILOSOPHER,  AND  FRIEND, 

IN  GRATEFUL  RECOGNITION 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT  is  due  to  the  fol- 
lowing publishers  for  their  courtesy  in 
permitting  the  author  to  quote  from  these  works: 
To  Messrs.  Macmillan  for  the  privilege  of  quoting 
from  these  poems  in  William  Butler  Yeats's 
"Collected  Poems:"  Rose  of  the  World,  He  Tells 
of  Perfect  Beauty,  Into  the  Twilight,  The  Moods, 
He  Gives  His  Beloved  Certain  Rhymes,  The 
Everlasting  Voices;  and  from  these  plays.  The 
Shadowy  Waters,  The  King's  Threshold,  Deirdre, 
in  Yeats's  "Plays,  Revised  and  Enlarged";  also 
from  the  following  essays  in  "Ideas  of  Good  and 
Evil,"  Ireland  and  the  Arts,  What  Is  Popular 
Poetry?,  Symbolism  in  Poetry,  Symbolism  in 
Painting,  Magic;  and  from  the  Appendix  IV  of 
Volume  II  of  the  "Poetical  Works,"  and  from 
the  Preface  to  "Plays  for  An  Irish  Theater." 

To  Messrs.  John  Lane  for  the  privilege  of  quot- 
ing the  following  poems  by  A.  E.,  from  "  Home- 
ward   Songs   by    the   Way,"     and    "  The   Earth 

Breath";  Breaghy,  The  Memory  of  Earth,  The 

vii 


vili  ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

Great  Breath,  Dusk,  Symbolism,  Dust,  The  Man 
and  the  Angel,  Reconciliation,  The  Twilight  of 
Earth,  Illusion.  To  Messrs.  Macmillan  for  the 
privilege  of  quoting  from  "Imaginations  and 
Reveries,"  passages  from  these  essays.  The  Re- 
newal of  Youth,  Ideals  of  the  New  Rural  Society. 

To  Messrs.  John  W.  Luce  and  Co.,  for  permis- 
sion to  quote  from  the  Prefaces  of  "The  Tinker's 
Wedding"  and  "The  Playboy  of  the  Western 
World,"  by  J.  M.  Synge,  and  from  The  Vagrants 
of  Wicklow,  in  "In  Wicklow  and  West  Kerry." 

To  Messrs.  Duffield  and  Co.,  for  permission  to 
quote  the  poem  To  My  Best  Friend,  from  "  Songs 
of  the  Fields,"  by  Francis  Ledwidge;  and  to  them 
and  to  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Sharp  for  permission  to 
quote  two  poems,  The  Vision,  and  Day  and  Night, 
from  the  "Collected  Works  of  Fiona  Macleod," 
and  a  passage  from  a  letter  to  Fiona  Macleod 
by  A.  E.  in  Mrs.  Sharp's  "William  Sharp:  A 
Memoir." 

To  Messrs.  Macmillan  for  permission  to  quote 
from  "The  Demigods"  by  James  Stephens,  and 
Mystic  and  Cavalier  and  Harmonies  from  the 
"Collected  Poems  of  Lionel  Johnson." 

To  Mr.  Mitchell  Kennerley  for  permission  to 
quote  from  an  article.  The  Irish  Dramatist  and 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT  ix 

the  Irish  People,  by  St.  John  G.  Ervine  in  "The 
Forum"  of  June,  1914.  To  "The  Century  Maga- 
zine" for  permission  to  quote  from  The  Old 
Woman's  Money,  by  James  Stephens  in  "The 
Century"  for  May,  1915.  To  "Pearson's  Maga- 
zine" for  permission  to  quote  from  The  Fight 
of  the  Irish  Farmers,  by  Charles  Edward  Russell, 
in  "Pearson's  Magazine"  of  September,  1915. 

To  Messrs.  Henry  Holt  and  Co.,  for  permission 
to  reprint  "  The  Plougher  "  from  Padraic  Colum's 
"  Wild  Earth." 

LLOYD  R.  MORRIS. 


FOREWORD 

THE  Celtic  Dawn"  is  a  study  of  the  several 
movements  which,  although  having  their 
foundation  in  a  single  consciously  expressed  phi- 
losophy, have  labored  in  widely  varied  fields  to 
produce  a  new  social  synthesis  in  contemporary 
Ireland.  I  have  found  five  of  these  to  be  of  major 
importance  as  forces  contributing  toward  this 
result.  These  five  movements  are  those  which 
have  been  concerned  with  literature,  the  drama, 
with  the  revival  of  Gaelic  as  the  language  of  daily 
speech,  with  economic  and  social  reform,  and 
with  political  thought.  Although  the  Irish  liter- 
ary and  dramatic  renascence  has  given  rise  to  a 
great  deal  of  critical  and  explanatory  writing, 
and  the  recent  insurrection  has  turned  the  atten- 
tion of  many  to  the  political  aspirations  and  social 
ideals  of  the  new  Ireland,  I  know  of  no  other  at- 
tempt to  consider  these  various  movements  in 
their  relation  to  each  other,  and  to  consider  them 
as  collectively  laboring  at  the  reconstruction  of 
Irish  life.  That  "The  Celtic  Dawn"  has  chosen 
this  field  as  its  province  must  constitute  its  claim 
upon  the  attention  of  the  reader. 

xi 


xii  FOREWORD 

I  anticipate  a  further  question.  Why,  the 
reader  may  ask,  should  Ireland  be  of  interest  to 
the  general  public?  For  four  reasons  which  may 
be  briefly  enumerated.  Because  at  the  present 
moment  the  "Irish  question"  is  the  most  impor- 
tant internal  problem  that  the  British  Empire 
has  to  solve.  Because  in  the  economic  organiza- 
tion of  agrarian  industries  Irish  economists  have 
evolved  and  put  into  actual  practice  a  philosophy 
the  application  of  which  to  the  economic  life  of 
our  own  rural  communities  has  only  begun  to  be 
appreciated.  Because  the  Irish  literary  and 
dramatic  movement  is  the  most  vital  contribu- 
tion that  has  been  made  to  contemporary  English 
literature.  And,  finally,  because  Ireland,  although 
her  government  was  mismanaged  from  West- 
minster, and  her  economic  life  was  ruined  by  the 
tinkering  of  politicians  who  did  not  understand 
her  problems,  although  thirty  years  ago  her  in- 
tellectual life  was  in  a  state  of  stagnation,  has 
discovered  in  the  five  movements  I  have  spoken 
of  the  means  of  preserving  her  national  spirit,  of 
reorganizing  her  economic  life,  of  producing  a 
literature  of  special  importance  to  the  world  in 
the  quality  of  its  spiritual  content,  and  of  realizing 
the  social  synthesis  of  which  this  volume  is  a  study. 


FOREWORD  xiii 

My  obligations  in  the  preparation  of  this  book 
have  been  many.  First  and  foremost  to  my  mother 
and  my  father,  who  have  carefully  read  each 
chapter  as  it  has  been  written  and  rewritten. 
My  debt  to  Professor  John  Erskine  of  Columbia 
University  can  only  be  acknowledged,  never 
repaid.  He,  too,  read  the  book  and  aided  me 
greatly  by  the  clarity  of  his  vision  and  the  pene- 
tration of  his  suggestions  for  its  improvement. 
To  Doctor  H.  W.  L.  Dana  of  Columbia  Univer- 
sity and  to  Mr.  Maurice  L.  Firuski  I  am  indebted 
for  bringing  to  my  attention  two  volumes  that 
might  otherwise  have  escaped  notice. 

Finally,  I  shall  always  treasure  the  memory 
of  an  illuminating  visit  to  Mr.  George  W.  Russell, 
"A.  E.,"  in  his  charming  home  in  Rathgar,  Dublin. 
There,  surrounded  by  beautiful  pictures  of  his 
own  painting,  I  had  the  inestimable  privilege  of 
coming  into  contact  with  the  most  vital  and  most 
versatile  mind  in  contemporary  Ireland,  that  of 
the  distinguished  poet,  mystic,  philosopher,  artist, 
economist  and  critic,  the  acknowledged  leader 
of  the  renascence. 

LLOYD  R.  MORRIS. 

New  York  City, 
August  J  1 916. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 
CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

The  Forces  at  Work i 

The  Celtic  Renascence  a  social  synthesis.  The 
literary  and  political  antecedents  of  the  renascence. 
The  desire  to  create  an  art  expressive  of  the  racial 
and  national  consciousness. 

CHAPTER  n 

Critical  Theories  of  the  Renascence (o 

The  problem  of  language.  Nationality  in  art.  The 
theories  of  Yeats.  Thomas  MacDonagh  and  the  use 
of  peasant  idiom.  "John  Eglinton"  and  cosmo- 
politanism. A.  E.'s  theory  of  nationality  in  art. 
Yeats  and  the  subject-matter  of  art.  Symbolism  and 
legend.    The  theory  of  the  Gaelic  Revival. 

CHAPTER  ni 

Poetry  of  the  Renascence 25 

Poetry  the  first  literary  form  to  attract  the  writers  of 
the  renascence.  The  poetry  of  A.  E,  The  relation 
of  his  poetry  to  Irish  life.  His  mystic  conception  of 
experience.  Nature,  beauty  and  love.  His  reaction 
against  Catholic  philosophy.  William  Butler 
Yeats.  His  original  poetic  intention.  His  theory  of 
symbolism.  "The  Wanderings  of  Oisin."  Its 
philosophic  attitude.     His  lyric  poetry.     Its  dom- 

XV 


xvi  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

inant  motives.  Love,  the  mystic  conception  of  life, 
and  nature.  Symbols  and  magic.  The  quality  of  his 
love  poetry.  His  lyric  feeling.  Tradition  and 
legend.  His  relation  to  contemporary  Irish  life. 
(/"Fiona  Macleod."  His  interest  in  legend  and 
dream  life.  The  qualities  of  his  verse.  Lionel 
Johnson.  His  love  of  Ireland,  the  Catholic  Church, 
and  the  classics.  The  qualities  of  his  verse.  Kath- 
^  erine  Tynan.  The  religious  ideal.  Douglas  Hyde. 
The  poetic  contribution  of  folk-poetry.  A  reaction 
to  life.  Alfred  Percival  Graves,  George  Sigerson,  v^ 
and  T.  W.  Rolleston.  "Ethna  Carberry,"  "Moira 
O'Neill,"  Dora  Sigerson  Shorter.  Alice  MilHgan, 
Eva  Gore-Booth,  Ella  Young.  Susan  Mitchell. 
'  Seumas  O'Sullivan,  Thomas  Keohler,  George  Rob- 
erts and  Charles  Weekes.  Herbert  Trench  and 
Joseph  Campbell.  Patrick  Colum,  John  Millington 
Synge,  James  Stephens  and  Patrick  MacGill. 
Seumas  MacManus  and  Norreys  Jephson  O'Connor. 
\-^Thomas  MacDonagh.  Francis  Ledwidge.  The 
change  in  poetic  feeling  and  in  reaction  to  experience 
during  the  renascence.  The  "central  flame"  of  the 
poetry  of  the  renascence. 

CHAPTER  IV 

The  Drama 88 

Origin  of  the  dramatic  movement.  The  plays  of 
Yeats.  His  theory  of  tragedy  and  comedy.  The 
qualities  of  his  poetic  drama.  George  Moore. 
Edward  Martyn  and  the  "intellectual  drama." 
Lady  Gregory  and  the  folk-play.  Douglas  Hyde 
and  A.  E.  John  Millington  Synge.  The  theme 
of  his  art.  His  theories  of  the  art  of  the  playwright. 
His  conception  of  character.    His  poetry.    His  use  of 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  xvii 

PAGE 

the  peasant  idiom.  Padraic  Colum.  Realism  of  his 
art.  His  chief  themes.  Lord  Dunsany.  His  myth- 
making  imagination.  Lennox  Robinson.  His 
realism  and  criticism  of  life.  "Rutherford  Mayne." 
The  influence  of  Synge.  T.  C.  Murray.  The  com- 
pleteness of  his  art.  St.  John  G.  Ervine.  His  feeling 
for  the  essentially  dramatic.  The  power  of  his 
dialogue.  Seumas  O'Kelly.  William  Boyle.  "Nor- 
reys  Connell."  George  Fitzmaurice,  Johanna  Red- 
mond, Lewis  Purcell  and  Terence  J.  MacSwiney. 
Thomas  MacDonagh  and  Joseph  Campbell.  The 
change  in  the  view  of  life  of  the  Irish  playwrights. 
Productions  and  acting  at  The  Abbey.  Contribu- 
tion of  the  dramatic  movement. 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Novel,  Folk-Lore,  and  Other  Prose 173 

Irish  authors  and  the  novel.  George  Moore.  The 
foundation  of  his  art.  The  quality  of  his  realism. 
Creation  of  character  and  the  art  of  the  background. 
His  reaction  against  Christian  morality.  His  Irish 
writing.  Minor  writers  of  the  period.  William 
Buckley,  Shan  Bullock.  "George  Birmingham." 
^  Hon.  Emily  Lawless.  Canon  Sheehan.  "E.  OE. 
Sommerville  and  Martin  Ross."  William  Butler 
Yeats.  St.  John  G.  Ervine.  His  realism.  The 
impersonal  attitude.  Social  criticism.  James 
Stephens.  His  philosophic  outlook.  His  contribu- 
tion to  contemporary  fiction.  His  humor.  His 
theory  of  art.  His  interests.  Patrick  MacGill. 
Social  criticism.  Folk-lore.  William  Larminie, 
Violet  Russell,  Lady  Gregory.  William  Butler 
Yeats.      "Fiona    Macleod."      The    quality    of    his 


xviii  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

work.  An  estimate  of  its  value.  The  essay.  A.  E. 
The  character  of  his  early  and  of  his  later  writing. 
Development  of  his  outlook  on  life.  William  Butler 
Yeats.    John  Eglinton  and  T.  M.  Kettle. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Movements  for  Social  and  Economic  Reform,  Home 
Rule,  Sinn  Fein,  The  Irish  Volunteers,  The  Re- 
bellion or  1916 215 

The  work  of  the  Gaelic  League.  The  cooperative 
movement  in  agriculture.  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  and 
the  theory  of  his  reforms.  The  I.  A.  O.  S.  Its  pur- 
pose and  methods.  The  United  Irishwomen.  The 
social  philosophy  of  A.  E,  Government  regulation. 
The  Land  Acts.  The  Congested  Districts  Board. 
The  Department  of  Agriculture  and  Technical  In- 
struction. The  effects  achieved  by  these  reforms. 
Political  theory.  Nationalism  and  Unionism.  The 
policy  of  devolution.  Sinn  Fein,  Its  programme  of 
revolution.  Passage  of  the  Home  Rule  Bill,  1914. 
Insurrections  in  Ulster.  Sir  Edward  Carson.  The 
Irish  Volunteers.  Causes  of  the  Rebellion  of  1916. 
Conclusion. 


THE  CELTIC  DAWN 


THE  CELTIC   DAWN 

OiAPTER  I 

THE    FORCES   AT   WORK 

MOST  people  in  America  have  come  to  think 
of  the  Irish  renascence  as  a  movement 
born  of  the  early  political  enthusiasms  of  William 
Butler  Yeats,  taking  from  him  the  direction  of  its 
thought,  laboring  at  first  in  verse  and  in  the  re- 
vival of  a  moribund  language,  and  later  in  the 
creation  of  a  body  of  dramatic  material  for  the 
use  of  a  little  theater  in  Dublin.  They  have  come 
to  think  of  its  work  as  a  purely  literary  phenome- 
non characterized  by  peculiar  tendencies  in  form 
and  in  substance,  the  product  of  an  intellectual 
aristocracy  somewhat  removed  from  life  and  its 
problems.  This  conception,  however,  does  not 
recognize  the  fact  that  the  renascence  in  Ireland 
is  the  expression  of  a  social  synthesis,  having  its\ 
foundations  in  political  and  social  history,  con-  J 
cerned  as  much  with  intellectual  emancipation  and 
economic  progress  as  it  is  with  the  art  by  which 
it  is  most  widely  known.    An  intimate  connection 

I 


2  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

exists  between  the  various  phases  of  the  move- 
ment, literary,  dramatic,  economic  and  social,  for 
all  of  them  have  been  inspired  by  a  common  aim, 
the  reconstruction  of  Irish  life,  and  it  is  my  pur- 
pose to  make  evident  the  realization  of  that  aim 
in  the  principal  fields  of  activity  which  it  has  per- 
vaded. For  the  present,  however,  it  will  suffice  to 
briefly  trace  the  course  of  literature  in  Ireland  during 
the  century  immediately  preceding  the  renascence. 
The  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  witnessed 
the  final  and  complete  disintegration  of  the  once 
powerful  bardic  order,  and  the  making  of  verses 
in  the  native  tongue  was  relegated  to  a  few  scat- 
tered individuals,  chiefly  in  Munster,  and- to  the 
bulk  of  the  peasantry,  who,  having  not  then  lost 
command  of  the  Gaelic,  were  enabled  to  sing  of 
their  sorrow,  their  hopes  and  their  loves  and  form 
a  body  of  folk-poetry  which  has  only  within  com- 
paratively recent  years  been  made  the  subject  of 
study  and  collection.  Until  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  that  part  of  Ireland  to  which 
English  was  the  native  language  possessed  no  dis- 
tinctively national  literature.  With  Thomas 
Moore,  whose  lyrics  were  written  for  Irish  music, 
and  with  Maria  Edgeworth,  whose  novels  are  the 
first  expression  in  prose  of  an  interest  in  the  life 


THE  FORCES  AT  WORK  3 

of  the  Irish  peasant,  a  start  had  been  made  in  the 
creation  of  a  distinctively  national  literature. 
Following  Moore  came  a  few  translators  from  the 
Irish,  chief  among  them  J.  J.  Callanan,  and  these 
were,  in  turn,  followed  by  the  poets  of  "Young 
Ireland."  "Young  Ireland"  was  the  name  chosen 
by  the  group  of  young  intellectuals  who  followed 
O'Connell  until  the  fatal  day  at  Clontarf  when 
the  veteran  leader  gave  the  signal  to  disband,  and 
all  hope  of  a  successful  revolution  was  lost.  After 
the  downfall  of  O'Connell's  theory  of  "agitation 
within  the  law,"  "Young  Ireland"  split  into  two 
parties,  one  of  which,  that  led  by  John  Mitchel, 
declared  themselves  in  favor  of  an  immediate 
revolution,  while  the  other,  of  which  Thomas  Davis 
was  the  chief  leader,  attempted  a  propaganda  of 
moral  and  intellectual  reform.  Davis,  himself  a 
poet  of  no  mean  ability,  was  essentially  a  prop- 
agandist, and  founded  a  paper,  "The  Nation," 
in  which  appeared  the  verse  and  prose  to  which 
his  political  philosophy  gave  birth.  The  most 
important  contributors  to  "The  Nation,"  aside 
from  Davis  himself,  were  James  Clarence  Mangan 
and  Edward  Walsh.  Mangan's  work,  like  that 
of  Coleridge,  to  whom  he  bears  some  resemblance, 
is  characterized  by  a  powerful  and  tortured  imagi- 


4  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

nation  and  great  lyric  beauty,  and  he  perhaps  is 
the  most  truly  poetic  of  all  the  "Young  Ireland" 
poets.  Edward  Walsh,  who  was  a  village  school- 
master, wrote  many  finely  poetic  translations  from 
the  Gaelic,  and  "Speranza,"  who  later  became 
known  as  Lady  William  Wilde,  wrote  some  verse 
of  merit,  and  much  stirring  prose.  In  the  mean- 
while, John  Mitchel  had  founded  "The  United 
Irishman"  and  had  commenced  to  preach  the 
doctrine  of  blood  and  iron  that  culminated  in 
his  imprisonment  and  the  disastrous  revolution 
of  1848.  His  prison  sentence  resulted  in  the 
composition  of  his  "Jail  Journal,"  a  book  that 
even  today  exercises  a  profound  effect  on  political 
thought  in  Ireland.  The  revolution  was  succeeded 
by  the  great  famine  of  1849,  the  coercion  acts 
passed  by  the  English  government,  the  tremen- 
dous emigration  to  America,  and  finally,  by  the 
rise  of  the  Fenian  party.  The  Fenian  movement 
took  up  the  doctrines  of  John  Mitchel,  and,  al- 
though materially  it  was  a  failure,  it  exercised  a 
wide  influence  on  subsequent  political  reform. 
Its  literary  productivity  was  small,  the  verse  of 
Charles  Kickham  and  of  Ellen  O'Leary,  the  sister 
of  the  revolutionist  John  O'Leary,  being  most 
fairly  representative,  verse  which  was  less  fiery 


THE  FORCES  AT  WORK  5 

than  that  of  "Young  Ireland,"  and  less  hopeful 
in  its  outlook.  During  the  period  of  Fenianism 
Sir  Samuel  Ferguson,  William  Allingham,  and 
Aubrey  de  Vere  were  publishing  poetry  that 
found  none  of  its  inspiration  in  politics.  Alling- 
ham was  the  poet  of  life  in  the  West,  a  lyricist  of 
subtle  charm  and  wistful  beauty,  a  poet  of  delicate 
mood  and  a  melancholy  nature.  Ferguson  drew 
for  his  material  on  the  old  bardic  tradition,  and 
was  successful  principally  in  depicting  action 
and  the  clash  of  high  passions,  while  Aubrey  de 
Vere  wrote  verse  that  was  meditative  and  religious, 
and  was  influenced  equally  by  Ireland,  the  Catho- 
lic tradition,  and  Wordsworth.  In  1889,  the  year  y 
in  which  both  Allingham  and  Ellen  O'Leary  died, 
William  Butler  Yeats  published  his  "Wanderings 
of  Oisin"  and  Douglas  Hyde  his  "Leabhar  Sgeului- 
gheachta"  (A  Book  of  Gaelic  Stories)  and  it  is 
from  the  publication  of  these  two  books  that  both 
the  revival  of  Gaelic  and  the  revival  of  Irish  litera- 
ture written  in  English  date.^ 

1  For  a  discussion  of  the  history  of  "Young  Ireland"  and 
Fenianism,  see  "  Contemporary  Ireland,"  by  L.  Paul-Dubois, 
Maunsel  and  Co.,  Dublin,  191 1;  Historical  Introduction, 
Chap.  II,  pp.  65-79.  For  a  brief  discussion  of  the  poetry  of 
the  period,  see  "A  Book  of  Irish  Verse,"  ed.  W.  B.  Yeats, 
3d  ed.  Methuen,  London,  191 1. 


6  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

The  fundamental  ideas  of  Yeats  and  Hyde  were 
identical  in  purpose.  Yeats,  because  of  his  early 
association  with  a  "Young  Ireland"  group,  fol- 
lowed the  theories  of  Davis,  and  planned  to  create 
a  literature  in  English  which  would  express  the 
national  consciousness  in  Ireland,  which  would 
throw  Irish  thought  back  upon  its  own  tradition 
and  thus  release  it  from  an  intellectual  dependence 
upon  England.  Hyde  proceeded  upon  the  theory 
that  the  essence  of  nationality  is  contained  in 
language,  and,  believing  that  the  soul  of  a  nation 
is  expressed  in  its  living  speech  as  well  as  in  its 
literature  and  in  its  art,  he  devoted  his  energies 
to  reviving  the  ancient  and  rapidly  dying  speech 
of  the  people,  and  to  giving  Ireland  a  modern 
literature  in  her  own  tongue.  An  analogy  may 
be  traced  between  the  literary  activity  that  ensued, 
and  the  history  of  Elizabethan  literature.  Both 
were  the  fulfillment  of  a  desire  for  a  purely  national 
art;  in  both  instances  creative  activity  was  pref- 
aced and  accompanied  by  critical  discussion  deal- 
ing with  the  general  theory  of  poetry  and  with 
the  medium  of  expression  to  be  employed;  finally, 
the  creative  intelligence  of  both  periods  was  di- 
rected toward  poetry,  the  drama,  and,  in  its 
latest  development,  the  novel. 


THE  FORCES  AT  WORK  7 

During  the  period  of  propaganda  that  was  later 
to  result  in  a  wide  artistic  productivity,  certain 
social  forces  likewise  made  themselves  manifest. 
First  and  foremost  of  these  were  the  efforts  made 
to  ameliorate  the  conditions  of  living  among  the 
peasantry.  These  efforts  assumed  two  general 
tendencies;  one  was  directed  toward  the  rehabili- 
tation of  cottage  crafts  and  of  the  arts  formerly 
cultivated  by  the  peasantry;  the  other  was  com- 
mitted to  the  furtherance  of  economic  and  agrarian 
reform  and  has  had  a  far  reaching  effect  not  only 
upon  public  policy  but  also  upon  the  solution 
of  the  economic  problems  peculiar  to  a  country 
whose  resources  are  mainly  agricultural,  and  whose 
government  has  been  as  patently  mismanaged 
as  that  of  Ireland. 

In  their  operation,  all  these  various  forces,  both 
artistic  and  social,  have  interacted,  and  often  the 
boundaries  between  them  have  become  indis- 
tinguishable, but  for  the  purpose  of  this  essay  it 
has  been  deemed  more  expedient  to  deal  first 
with  the  artistic,  and  then  with  the  social  phases. 
In  the  field  of  art  the  more  clearly  indicated  divi- 
sions are  criticism  and  the  revival  of  Gaelic,  poetry, 
the  drama,  and  the  novel.  And  since  it  is  in  the 
critical  writing  of  the  movement  that  its  most 


8  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

fundamental  problems  appear,  the  critical  theories 
involved  provide  the  most  favorable  foundations 
for  a  survey  of  the  Celtic  renascence  in  the 
arts. 


CHAPTER  II 

CRITICAL  THEORIES    OF   THE    RENASCENCE 

THE  problems  with  which  the  criticism  of  the 
Irish  renascence  has  been  mostly  profitably 
concerned  are  those  which  have  arisen  in  the 
development  of  a  native  literature  and  drama, 
and  chief  among  them  in  the  degree  of  its  influ- 
ence on  subsequent  creative  art  has  been  the 
discussion  of  expression,  or,  as  it  may  more  con- 
veniently be  termed,  the  problem  of  language. 
A  prior  controversy  concerning  the  relative  values 
of  nationality  and  cosmopolitanism  in  art  served 
to  delimit  three  points  of  view  in  regard  to  lan- 
guage, and  employed  the  energies  of  three  men, 
George  W.  Russell,  William  Butler  Yeats  and 
John  Eglinton,  who,  with  Doctor  Douglas  Hyde, 
may  be  said  to  control  the  ideas  of  the  Irish  re- 
vival. 

The  propaganda  for  the  revival  of  the  Gaelic 
language  which  was  instituted  by  Douglas  Hyde 
with  the  publication,  in  1889,  of  "Leabhar  Sgeului- 
gheachta"   (A  Book  of  Gaelic  Stories),  resulted 

9 


lO  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

four  years  later  in  the  organization  of  the  Gaelic 
League,  a  non-political  body  having  as  its  pur- 
pose the  rehabilitation  of  the  native  language 
and  arts,  and  the  creation  of  a  modern  literature 
in  Irish.  To  this  end  Doctor  Hyde  published^,  in 
1894,  his  "Love  Songs  of  Connacht,"  a  volume 
of  poems  in  Irish  with  an  accompanying  transla- 
tion into  the  literal  English  equivalent,  and  this 
translation  marks  the  first  use  of  the  Anglo-Irish 
peasant  dialect  as  a  medium  of  artistic  expression. 
In  the  meanwhile  Yeats,  who  in  1889  had  pub- 
lished "The  Wanderings  of  Oisin,"  conceived  the 
project  of  creating  a  literature  that  would  ade- 
quately express  the  Celtic  consciousness  in  the 
English  language,  and  in  the  collection  of  folk-lore 
and  folk-history  with  which  he  had  busied  him- 
self, he  had  come  upon  the  peasant  dialecc  to 
which  Doctor  Hyde  had  given  the  first  literary 
usage,  and  allured  by  the  wealth  and  the  poetry 
of  its  expression,  advocated  its  use  in  literature. 

The  soul  of  Ireland,  it  seemed  to  Yeats,  was  to 
be  found  in  its  tradition,  in  its  history,  in  its  folk- 
legends,  the  consciousness  of  which  has  had  its 
psychological  influence  in  two  qualities  that  he 
deems  peculiar  to  the  Irish  people,  the  tense  ardor 
of    patriotism    manifested    in    their    protracted 


CRITICAL  THEORIES  OF  THE  RENASCENCE     1 1 

struggle  for  political  independence,  and  the  half 
pagan,  half  Christian  belief  in  the  reality  of  an 
unseen  world  which  had  made  possible  the  co- 
existence of  both  the  faery  realm  and  Catholic 
theology.  Like  Thomas  Davis,  whose  theories 
he  has  in  a  measure  inherited,  Yeats's  nationalism 
was  directed  rather  toward  an  intellectual  and 
moral  revolution  than  toward  one  purely  political 
in  its  nature;  he  desired  a  spiritual  renascence, 
and  he  believed  that  it  could  be  achieved  by  em- 
ploying art  as  a  medium,  and,  therefore,  by  creat- 
ing an  art  having  its  foundation  in  the  soul  of 
the  race.  "I  would  have  Ireland,"  he  has  written, 
''recreate  the  ancient  arts,  the  arts  as  they  were 
understood  in  Judea,  in  India,  in  Scandinavia, 
in  Greece  and  Rome,  in  every  ancient  land;  as  they 
were  understood  when  they  moved  a  whole  people 
and  not  a  few  people  who  have  grown  up  in  a 
leisure  class  and  made  this  understanding  their 
business."^     In   literature    this   art  was   to   find 

*  Quoted  from  "  Ireland  and  the  Arts,"  in  "  Ideas  of  Good 
and  Evil,"  Collected  Works,  Vol.  VI,  A.  H.  BuUen,  London, 
1908.  The  book  is  a  subtle  interpretation  of  Yeats's  point 
of  view,  and  will  be  drawn  on  more  fully  in  a  later  section; 
three  essays  are  especially  important  in  understanding  the 
author's  critical  outlook,  that  quoted  above,  "The  Celtic 
Element  in  Literature,"  and  "The  Autumn  of  the  Body." 


12  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

its  language  in  the  rich  idiom  of  the  peasantry 
of  the  west,  a  doctrine  in  which  Yeats  has 
more  lately  been  joined  by  a  younger  poet 
and  critic,  Thomas  MacDonagh.  The  thesis 
of  their  contention  is  that  modern  English,  the 
English  of  contemporary  literature,  is  essentially 
an  impoverished  language  incapable  of  directly 
expressing  thought,  for  it  has  become  practically 
impossible  for  the  writer  to  distinguish  between 
the  substance  of  his  thought  and  the  conventional 
phrase  which  is  its  code  in  expression,  although 
the  connotation  is  sufficiently  indirect  to  render 
a  misinterpretation  by  his  reader  an  equal  pos- 
sibility.^ They  view  English  as  a  language  that 
has  lost  its  vitality,  as  an  imperfect  algebra  of 
thought,  as  merely  an  approximation  in  expres- 
sion of  the  intellectual  substance.  Therefore 
they  counsel  the  use  of  Anglo-Irish,  which,  since 
it  is  a  colloquial  language  and  not  a  literary,  is 
the  direct  expression  of  experience,  and  has  never 
been  standardized  in  its  suggestiveness,  nor  viti- 
ated in  its  power  to  adequately  reflect  with  equal 

^See  "The  Irish  Review"  for  May,  1914,  "Criricism  and 
Irish  Poetry"  by  Thomas  MacDonagh,  and  same,  June,  1914, 
"Language  and  Literature  in  Ireland."  MacDonagh  was 
executed  in  Dublin  by  the  military  authorities  after  the  in- 
surrection of  April,  19 1 6. 


CRITICAL  THEORIES  OF  THE  RENASCENCE     13 

richness  of  connotation  the  concreteness  of  life 
and  the  abstraction  of  thought.  They  find  the 
historical  justification  of  their  theory  in  the  fact 
that  Anglo-Irish  is  a  product  of  the  fusion  of 
Elizabethan  English  with  the  rough  old  mold  of 
the  Gaelic  tongue,  and  as  such  is  the  medium  of 
expression  most  purely  adapted  to  the  Celtic 
mind  and  to  Celtic  life. 

Opposed  to  the  theory  of  the  language  move- 
ment stands  W.  K.  Magee,  better  known  as  "John 
Eglinton,"  author  of  the  most  acute  criticism 
that  the  Celtic  renascence  has  yet  inspired,  a 
writer  whose  trenchant,  powerful  style  and  rugged 
thought  place  him  among  the  most  valuable  of 
contemporary  essayists,  although  the  service  that 
he  has  rendered  to  the  movement  has  often  been 
esteemed  but  a  disservice.^  Eglinton's  thesis  is 
that  the  essential  spirit  of  nationality  is  born  of 
the  peasantry,   but  that  historically,   both   lan- 

^The  writings  of  John  Eglinton  are:  "Two  Essays  on  the 
Remnant,"  1896,  "Pebbles  from  a  Brook,"  1901,  "Bards  and 
Saints,"i9o6,  Tower  Press  Booklets,  Series  I,  No.  5,  Maunsel 
&  Co.,  Dublin.  "Some  Literary  Ideals  in  Ireland,"  London: 
Fisher  Unwin,  1899.  Also  see  "Dana"  a  discontinued  maga- 
zine of  which  he  was  editor.  Eglinton  is  one  of  the  most 
original  thinkers  in  Ireland  today,  and  his  influence  is  ex- 
tremely important  in  the  development  of  thought  in  con- 
temporary Ireland. 


14  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

guage  and  literature  have  been  imposed  by  a 
superior  culture.  And  in  "Bards  and  Saints"  he 
proves  conclusively  that  the  aspiration  of  na- 
tionality was  not  an  outgrowth  of  peasant  thought 
in  Ireland,  but  came  from  the  Anglo-Irish  mind, 
which  took  no  cognisance  of  the  true  national 
nucleus,  the  peasant.  Political  thought  later 
relegated  the  idea  of  nationality  to  the  peasant 
nucleus,  which  had  the  benefit  neither  of  a  su- 
perior culture  that  had  been  imposed  on  it  from 
without,  nor  of  a  native  and  indigenous  culture  or 
spiritual  life  to  give  it  individuality.  It  is  in  a 
thought  movement  rather  than  in  a  language 
movement,  he  claims,  that  the  spirit  of  nationality 
proclaims  itself,  and  in  the  revival  of  an  essentially 
moribund  language  he  finds  only  the  occasion  for 
a  schism  in  what  appears  to  him  to  be  the  first 
dawn  of  a  truly  national  consciousness  in  Ireland. 
And  he  is  perhaps  the  only  writer  who  has  pointed 
out  the  futility  of  attempting  to  dispense  with  the 
accumulated  culture  of  centuries  of  English  in- 
tellectual development  in  order  to  create  a  liter- 
ature written  in  a  language  that  "has  never  under- 
gone a  spiritual  discipline,  and  still  retains  a  rude 
flavour  as  of  a  language  which  has  never  been 
properly  to  school."     His  antagonism  to  Yeats's 


CRITICAL  THEORIES  OF  THE  RENASCENCE    15 

theory  of  the  expression  of  nationality  In  art  has 
been  equally  determined.  In  an  essay  on  "The 
De-Davlsatlon  of  Irish  Literature"  he  distin- 
guishes between  literature,  which  is  the  faithful 
record  of  an  individual  impression,  and  rhetoric, 
which  is  the  art  of  persuasion  directed  to  a  particu- 
lar audience,  and  journalism,  which,  at  its  best, 
is  a  fusion  of  both.  That  Davis  was  a  brilliant 
journalist,  he  claims  is  evident  in  the  fact  that  he 
succeeded  in  inspiring  subsequent  Irish  national 
literature  with  his  theory,  which  was  that  liter- 
ature was  to  be  "not  the  interpretation  of  the  soul 
of  a  people,  still  less  the  emancipation  of  the  na- 
tional mind  by  means  of  individual  utterance, 
but — no  doubt  a  very  good  thing — the  expression 
of  such  sentiments  as  help  to  exalt  an  Irishman's 
notions  of  the  excellence  and  Importance  of  the 
race  to  which  he  belongs."  Mitchel,  on  the  other 
hand,  wrote  his  "Jail  Journal"  under  the  influence 
of  an  overmastering  desire  for  self  expression,  and 
without  thought  of  an  audience,  and  succeeded 
in  producing  not  only  literature,  but  literature 
which  for  the  first  time  interpreted,  perhaps  un- 
consciously, the  spirit  of  Irish  nationality.  "It 
must  be  confessed,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  and  this 
passage  contains  the  core  of  his  thought,  "that 


l6  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

when  Anglo-Irish  literature  has  brought  us  at 
least  so  far  as  the  literary  integrity  and  hearty 
directness  of  John  Mitchel,  it  seems  a  pity  if  the 
'Language  Movement'  is  to  transport  literature 
in  this  country  back  again  to  the  point  where  the 
good  Davis  left  it,  to  that  region,  which  has  now 
become  somewhat  insipid,  in  which  all  private 
differences  are  sunk,  and  in  which  the  Irishman 
has  to  speak  in  his  national  rather  than  in  his 
human  capacity.  For  the  questions  which  divide 
household  and  nation  against  themselves,  reli- 
gious, political,  fundamental  questions,  these  are 
the  questions  in  respect  to  which  the  literary  man 
must  have  the  license  of  a  prophet;  it  is  these 
which  he  looks  on  as  his  peculiar  region;  it  is  these 
upon  which  literature,  more  than  any  other 
agency,  can  hope  to  shed  some  light.  Literature 
must  be  as  free  as  the  elements;  if  that  is  to  be 
cosmopolitan  it  must  be  cosmopolitan."  The 
theories  of  Eglinton,  Yeats  and  Hyde  do  not 
differ  in  the  fundamental  purpose  of  achieving 
an  intellectual  and  artistic  emancipation,  but  in 
the  method  by  which  it  may  be  attained.  Yeats 
and  Hyde  represent  the  two  divisions  of  national- 
ism in  art,  the  one  advocating  the  use  of  Anglo- 
Irish,  the  other,  of  Gaelic,  while  Eglinton  stands 


CRITICAL  THEORIES  OF  THE  RENASCENCE    17 

for  the  broader  cosmopolitan  of  thought  that  for 
the  past  century  has  been  characteristic  of  Euro- 
pean art.  The  influence  of  Eglinton  is  apparent 
in  the  work  of  Frederick  Ryan,  whose  "Criticism 
and  Courage"  is  a  demonstration  of  the  necessity 
of  intellectual  freedom  in  Ireland  as  an  essential 
in  the  development  of  national  progress,  and  is 
chiefly  directed  against  the  domination  over 
thought  exercised  by  the  clerical  dogma  and  tradi- 
tion that  constitutes  the  reactionary  element  in 
Irish  public  consciousness.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  nationalist  theory  of  art  has  been  upheld  by 
no  less  able  critic  than  George  W.  Russell,  whose 
genius  is  confined  to  no  one  field,  and  who  has 
contributed  under  the  pseudonym  of  "A.  E."  to 
poetry,  to  the  drama,  to  painting  and  to  social 
economy.  His  statement  of  the  conception  of 
nationalism  in  art  is  made  in  the  little  volume 
"Irish  Essays,"  and  is  not  limited  by  allegiance 
to  either  of  the  two  language  movements.  He 
views  nationality  less  as  a  political  than  a  spiritual 
force  creating  ideals  that  have  never  had  philosophic 
definition  or  supreme  expression  in  literature,  and 
believes  that  those  writers  who  give  to  the  vague  the 
expression  that  it  demands  are  evolving  not  only  a 
national  literature,  but  the  soul  of  a  nation  as  well. 


I8  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

The  influence  of  the  theory  of  nationalism  in  art 
has,  however,  not  been  entirely  directed  toward 
the  selection  of  subject;  the  interest  in  expression 
which  was  productive  of  the  literary  usage  of 
peasant  idiom  has  been  one  of  its  most  potent 
characteristics,  and  this  interest,  apart  from  its 
obvious  utility  to  a  distinctively  national  art, 
depended  upon  an  esthetics  that  has  had  its  most 
complete  definition  in  the  critical  writing  of  Yeats. 
In  considering  the  esthetic  theories  of  Yeats  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  predominating 
feeling  of  his  verse  is  lyrical,  even  in  his  long  poem, 
"The  Wandering  of  Oisin"  and  in  his  later  dra- 
matic writing,  and  that  the  essence  of  a  lyric  lies 
in  the  expression  of  mood  or  of  an  emotion  which, 
far  from  being  controlled  by  the  poet,  is  so  power- 
ful and  so  compelling  that,  for  the  moment,  the 
emotion  controls  the  man.  In  this  respect  lyric- 
ism is  the  direct  antithesis  of  prose,  which,  at  its 
purest,  is  the  complete  control  of  expression  by 
intellect.  The  statement  which  most  clearly 
enunciates  Yeats's  position  in  criticism  is  con- 
tained in  a  brief  summary  of  the  principles  of  the 
Abbey   Theater.^     "Before   men    read,"    he   has 

^  Cited  from  "The  Work  of  the  National  Theatre  Society 
at  the  Abbey  Theatre,  Dublin;  A  Statement  of  Principles." 


CRITICAL  THEORIES  OF  THE  RENASCENCE     19 

written,  "the  ear  and  the  tongue  were  subtle, 
and  delighted  one  another  with  the  little  tunes 
that  were  in  words.  .  .  .  They  loved  language, 
and  all  literature  was  then,  whether  in  the  mouth 
of  minstrels,  players,  or  singers,  but  the  perfec- 
tion of  an  art  that  everybody  practised,  a  flower 
from  the  stem  of  life."  And  in  another  passage 
he  has  written,  "Without  fine  words  there  is  no 
literature."  With  the  subjugation  of  literature 
to  print,  beautiful  language  decayed,  for  the  appeal 
to  the  ear  had  been  forgotten,  and  the  beauty  of 
words,  depending,  as  it  does,  upon  utterance  by 
the  voice,  lost  the  quality  of  its  allusion,  and 
words  became  merely  the  counters  of  thought. 
The  art  that  he  desired  to  create  was  to  come  out 
of  life,  expressing  those  emotions  that,  evoking 
images  of  beauty,  are  in  themselves  beautiful,  and 
for  this  he  deemed  the  language  of  ordinary  use 
impossible,  while  the  language  of  poetry  expressed 
little  relation  to  life.  Therefore  he  felt  it  neces- 
sary to  create  a  style,  the  elements  of  which  he 
found  in  a  language  that  came  out  of  life  but  that 
had  not  been  corrupted  by  print,  the  dialect  of  the 

Appendix  IV  in  Vol.  II  of  "The  Poetical  Works  of  Wil- 
liam Butler  Yeats,"  The  Macmillan  Company,  New  York, 
1914. 


20  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

peasants,  which  had  lost  nothing  of  the  picturesque 
allusion  or  the  vocable  beauty  with  which  the 
language  of  poetry  had,  in  a  former  day,  been 
pregnant.  This  preoccupation  with  style  is  innate 
not  only  in  the  work  of  Yeats  but  also  in  that  of 
the  two  other  writers  who  have  been  most  in- 
timately associated  with  him,  John  Millington 
Synge  and  Lady  Gregory.  Closely  related  to  it, 
and  in  part  dependent  upon  it  is  the  desire  to  sub- 
stitute the  Irish  for  the  English  tradition  in  the 
poetry  of  the  Celtic  renascence.  Symbols  derive 
their  connotation  from  the  associations  that  they 
evoke,  and  those  things  which,  in  the  genesis  of  a 
long  tradition,  have  become  true  symbols  are 
always  those  which  express  the  perfection  of  the 
quality  of  which  they  are  the  type.  Symbolism 
presupposes  an  acquaintance  with  the  tradition 
of  which  it  is  born,  a  tradition,  whether  written 
or  unwritten,  that  is  a  cumulative  record  of  life, 
and  therefore  Yeats,  in  his  search  for  a  style 
directly  expressive  of  life,  employed  one  that  is 
rich  in  symbol,  and  in  this,  also,  he  has  been  fol- 
lowed by  Synge  and  by  Lady  Gregory,  who,  if 
they  are  not  strictly  symbolists,  have  built  up  a 
style  that  is  largely  metaphorical.^  This  lyrical, 
1  These  theories  are  stated  for  the  most  part  in  "  Ideas  of 


CRITICAL  THEORIES  OF  THE  RENASCENCE    21 

or  as  some  critics  prefer  to  term  it,  realistic,  imme- 
diacy of  art,  that  finds  its  expression  in  symbol, 
is  characteristic  not  alone  of  Yeats  and  the  group 
that  followed  him,  but  of  certain  Irish  writers 
upon  whom  he  has  had  no  influence,  and  of  a 
group  of  continental  writers,  of  whom  the  most 
famous  is  Maurice  Maeterlinck. 

The  tradition  presupposed  by  the  symbolists 
in  Ireland  had  received  its  first  evaluation  in 
modern  criticism  from  Renan,  in  his  "Poetry  of 
the  Celtic  Races"  in  1859,  ^^^  from  Arnold,  in 
his  essay  "On  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature"  in 
1865.  German  scholarship,  with  its  customary 
thoroughness,  devoted  itself  to  research  and  the 
redaction  of  texts,  while  in  Ireland  Standish 
O'Grady  and  Doctor  P.  W.  Joyce  prepared  the 
legends  for  subsequent  poetic  use,  and  before  them 
Petrie  and  Sir  William  Wilde  had  interested  them- 
selves in  the  study  of  the  decaying  language  and 
customs  of  the  Gael.  In  France,  likewise,  the 
study  of  Gaelic,  and  especially  of  the  Breton 
dialect,  prospered;  courses  in  the  language  were 
given  at  the  College  de  France,  the  Revue  Cel- 
tique  had  been  founded,  and  Irish  literary  so- 
Good  and  Evil,"  in  the  essays  on  "The  Symbolism  of  Paint- 
ing" and  "The  Symbolism  of  Poetry." 


/ 


22  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

cieties  discussed  literature  and  politics  in  a  desul- 
tory but  not  unprofitable  manner.  The  first 
attempt  to  give  Ireland  a  modern  literature  in  her 
own  language  came,  as  has  been  said,  with  the 
publication  of  Douglas  Hyde's  first  book,  in  1889. 
In  1893  he  founded  the  Gaelic  League,  which  be- 
came the  most  potent  factor  in  urging  the  renas- 
cence of  Irish  in  Ireland,  and  which,  likewise,  has 
been  of  inestimable  service  to  the  renascence  of 
Irish  literature  in  English.  The  League  is  a  non- 
political,  non-sectarian  body;  its  chief  concern 
is  the  propagation  of  Irish  as  a  spoken  and  as  a 
literary  language  and  the  creation  of  a  literature 
embodying  a  sufficiently  close  spiritual  relation 
to  the  life  of  the  people  to  be  readily  understood 
by  them.  With  the  growth  of  a  popular  interest 
in  the  language,  the  League  has  turned  its  atten- 
tion to  the  revival  of  the  ancient  arts,  among  them 
the  cottage  crafts  and  the  communal  arts  of  sing- 
ing, dancing,  and  narration,  for  which  there  are 
frequent  competitions.  The  chief  service  of  the 
League  to  literature  has  been  the  recovery  of  the 
tradition  long  hidden  both  in  folk-lore  and  in  the 
undeciphered  manuscripts  of  old  Gaelic  poetry, 
which  have  been  rescued,  in  great  part,  from 
oblivion  by  Professor  Kuno  Meyer,  whose  transla- 


CRITICAL  THEORIES  OF  THE  RENASCENCE    23 

tions  are  an  enduring  monument  to  his  philological 
attainment  and  to  the  cherishing  care  with  which 
he  has  rendered  the  old  bardic  feeling  in  lucid  and 
readable  English.  The  impetus  given  to  a  latent 
interest  in  the  old  legends  and  the  cultivation  of 
the  tradition  and  culture  of  the  race  through  the 
medium  of  language  have  resulted  in  an  increased 
emphasis  upon  those  tendencies  of  the  Celtic 
mind  which  distinguish  it  from  the  Anglo-Saxon, 
Into  which  It  had  been  In  danger  of  becoming 
absorbed,  and  in  the  preparation  of  material  upon 
which  that  mind,  when  it  had  attained  the  con- 
sciousness of  self  perequisite  to  its  functioning  in 
art,  could  exercise  its  creative  energies. 

The  general  critical  theories  have  developed 
certain  well  defined  tendencies  traceable  in  the 
subsequent  development  of  creative  art  in  Ireland. 
First  in  Importance  Is  the  creation  of  a  national 
culture  through  literature  embodying  the  Ideals 
and  the  spirit  of  the  race.  This  literature,  essen- 
tially democratic  In  Its  aim,  is  characterized  by  a 
desire  to  approach  life  In  its  simplest  and  most 
truthful  terms  and  to  deal  with  its  essence  rather 
than  with  its  external  manifestations.  In  the 
matter  of  expression  there  have  been  three  diver- 
gent views,  one  of  which  claims  precedence  for 


24  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

Gaelic,  the  other  for  English,  and  the  third  for 
the  present  dialect,  or  Anglo-Irish,  as  the  language 
in  which  the  Celtic  mind  and  the  Celtic  soul 
achieve  their  fullest  expression.  And,  finally, 
there  has  been  the  interest  in  language  for  its  own 
beauty;  in  the  revival  of  the  Celtic  tradition, 
folk-lore  and  legend,  and,  born,  perhaps,  of  this 
interest,  the  view  of  life  which  dismisses  that 
which  we  ordinarily  call  reality  as  externality, 
and  loses  itself  in  the  spirit,  finding  its  expression 
in  symbol. 


CHAPTER  III 

POETRY   OF   THE    RENASCENCE 

POETRY  was  the  first  of  the  literary  forms 
to  attract  the  writers  of  the  Celtic  re- 
nascence, and  this,  perhaps,  for  two  reasons;  the 
literature  which  had  come  out  of  both  ancient  and 
modern  Ireland  had  been,  in  the  main,  poetic,  and 
the  genesis  of  the  Celtic  literary  movement  was 
conceived  in  the  attempt  to  write  popular  poetry 
of  literary  merit.  For  the  rest,  poetry,  although 
the  drama  has  claimed  many  of  its  priesthood,  has 
given  to  Ireland  what  may  well  be  its  most  en- 
during art. 

For  many  of  the  poets  of  contemporary  Ireland 
poetry  has  been  the  voice  of  social  protest,  for 
many  it  has  been  a  philosophy  or  an  art  pas- 
sionately cherished,  a  tapestry  woven  on  the  loom 
of  beauty;  to  one  at  least  it  has  been  that  which 
Plato  held  it,  the  expression  of  a  soul  inspired 
by  the  breath  of  the  gods.  A  visionary  and  a 
mystic,  A.  E.  believes  in  the  validity  of  his  inspira- 
tion, and  although  his  is  the  most  vivid  person- 

25 


26  THE  CELTIC  DAWN. 

ality  in  Ireland  today,  his  verse  is  curiously  im- 
personal, and  even  though  there  is  in  it  the  lyric 
enthusiasm  of  the  soul  become  one  with  the  in- 
finite and  eternal  oversoul,  this  enthusiasm  is  cold, 
pure,  unsensuous.  Poetry  is  to  him  highly  seri- 
ous, for  it  is  the  ritual  of  his  religion,  and  it  is 
holy,  for  its  inspiration  is  the  breath  of  divinity. 
A  deliberate  estheticism  plays  no  part  either  in  his 
verse  or  in  his  painting,  for  he  does  not  accept  the 
standards  of  art  as  the  conditioning  factor  of  the 
expression  of  the  spirit  that  in  itself  is  the  source  of 
all  creative  activity.  To  comprehend  his  view  of 
life  one  must  return  by  way  of  Blake  and  Jacob 
Boehme,  by  way  of  Swedenborg  and  Crashaw  and 
Santa  Teresa  to  the  neoplatonists  of  Alexandria,  to 
Plato  himself,  and  to  the  sacred  books  of  the  east; 
for  his  philosophy  of  life  is  not  a  product  of  Ireland, 
although  it  has  profoundly  influenced  the  literature 
that  we  are  considering.  It  is,  however,  a  product 
of  the  conflict  between  the  rational  and  intuitional 
explanations  of  the  world,  between  the  despotism 
of  fact  and  the  revelation  of  a  spiritual  order  beside 
which  fact  sinks  into  insignificance,  which  has  been 
characteristic,  in  one  form  or  another,  of  every 
period  of  thought  in  man's  intellectual  history. 
Plato,   it  will   be   remembered,   explained   the 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  27 

vision  of  the  mystic  by  the  beautiful  fable  of  the 
heavenly  chariot  ride  of  the  unborn  soul,  and  in 
his  declaration  that  inspiration  is  a  divine  madness 
attained  by  those  who  have  kept  the  soul  sensitive 
to  beauty.  A  similar  belief  underlies  A.  E.'s  reac- 
tion to  life. 

With  the  Brahmins  and  with  Plato,  he  holds 
that  the  life  of  the  soul  is  cyclic,  that  its  physical 
birth  and  rebirth  is  but  the  condition  of  a  pil- 
grimage from  the  eternal  to  the  eternal,  and  that 
the  spiritual  memories  of  the  eternal  are  the  moti- 
vating forces  of  physical  life.  This  has  found 
definite  expression  in  the  preface  to  his  "Home- 
ward: Songs  by  the  Way":  (1894)  "I  move  among 
men  and  places,  and  in  living  I  learned  the  truth 
at  last.  I  know  I  am  a  spirit,  and  that  I  went 
forth  in  old  time  from  the  self-ancestral  to  labours 
yet  unaccomplished;  but  filled  ever  and  again  with 
homesickness  I  made  these  songs  by  the  way." 
Spiritual  memory  was  explained  by  Plato  as  the 
recollection  of  the  visions  of  those  Ideas  which 
were  seen  by  the  soul  in  its  heavenly  ride;  with 
A.  E.  this  conception  has  been  fused  with  the 
doctrine  of  ancestral  memory,  a  recapitulation  of 
the  evolution  of  race  consciousness  that  is  present, 
subconsciously,  in  all  individuals,  a  doctrine  that 


28  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

has  been  important  in  the  point  of  view  of  two 
other  poets,  W.  B.  Yeats,  and  "Fiona  Macleod." 
To  Plato,  beauty  consisted  in  the  suggestion  of 
immortahty,  and  it  is  this  idea  of  beauty  that  has 
been  present  not  alone  in  the  verse  of  Crashaw  and 
Blake,  who  were  mystics,  but  also  in  that  of 
Spenser,  Milton  and  Wordsworth,  who  were  Pla- 
tonists,  though  not  essentially  of  a  mystic  nature. 
It  is  to  Wordsworth,  among  all  the  English  poets, 
however,  that  A.  E.  is  most  closely  related,  and 
the  bond  that  is  between  them  lies  chiefly  in  their 
view  of  nature. 

To  Wordsworth  and  to  A.  E.,  and  to  Emerson, 
with  whom  A.  E.  has  often  been  compared,  the 
suggestion  of  immortality  that  is  beauty  has  been 
inspired  most  frequently  by  nature,  and  nature  to 
them  has  been  the  symbol  of  a  universal  spirit  of 
which  man  realizes  himself  a  part  in  the  rare  mo- 
ments of  ecstasy  that  are  true  vision.  Earthly 
beauty,  to  the  man  whose  soul  is  sensitive  to  all 
the  subtle  influences  of  form  and  color,  is  but 
the  suggestion  of  a  beauty  more  spiritual,  visual- 
ized, perhaps,  but  in  a  vague  dream  of  some  other 
self,  in  a  moment  when  the  soul  has  had  its  life_ 
apart.  In  Its  vision  of  this  beauty  the  soul  is 
bound  by  the  senses  and  their  experience  of  what 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  29 

we  know  as  life,  and  always  it  clothes  the  formless 
essence  of  spiritual  beauty  in  the  symbol  of  a 
beauty  that  is  earthly  but  that  is  the  most  perfect 
that  the  senses  know,  for  the  imagination  is  but 
memory,  and  all  art  and  all  knowledge  are  born 
of  memory  alone.  Art,  because  it  seeks  the  soul 
through  the  emotions,  and  the  emotions  through 
the  senses,  has  found  its  symbols  in  the  world  of 
sensation;  but  spiritual  beauty,  being  impalpable, 
finds  its  expression  equally  in  ideas,  and  the  con- 
tribution of  our  day  to  the  history  of  beauty  has 
been  in  our  recognition  of  the  poetry  of  science, 
and  the  beauty  of  abstract  ideas.  And  to  the 
mystic  the  laws  of  science  are  but  the  symbolic 
expression  of  spiritual  law,  as  earthly  beauty  is 
but  the  suggestion  of  the  beauty  of  the  soul  of 
the  world,  that  is  revealed  to  the  intuition  in  a 
moment  of  exaltation  that  is  called  inspired. 
It  is  this  pantheism,  this  quest  of  the  soul  for 
unity  with  the  spirit  of  life,  that  makes  A.  E., 
as  it  did  Wordsworth,  essentially  a  poet  of 
nature,  although  nature  is  but  the  symbol  of 
that  spirit  and  the  inspiration  of  the  mood  of 
ecstasy. 

Of  this  mood  informed  of  ecstasy,  he  has  written 
in  a  poem  called  "Breaghy": 


30  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

"When  twilight  flutters  the  mountains  over, 
The  faery  lights  from  the  earth  unfold: 
And  over  the  caves  enchanted  hover 
The  giant  heroes  and  gods  of  old. 
The  bird  of  aether  its  flaming  pinions 
Waves  over  earth  the  whole  night  long: 
The  stars  drop  down  in  their  blue  dominions 
To  hymn  together  their  choral  song. 
The  child  of  earth  in  his  heart  grows  burning, 
Mad  for  the  night  and  the  deep  unknown: 
His  alien  flame  in  a  dream  returning 
Seats  itself  on  the  ancient  throne. 
When  twilight  over  the  mountains  fluttered, 
And  night  with  its  starry  millions  came, 
I  too  had  dreams:  the  songs  I  have  uttered 
Come  from  this  heart  that  was  touched  by  the  flame." 

And  he  has  written  of  symbolism  thus: 

"Now  when  the  spirit  in  us  wakes  and  broods. 
Filled  with  home  yearnings,  drowsily  it  flings 
From  its  deep  heart  high  dreams  and  mystic  moods, 
Mixed  with  the  memory  of  the  loved  earth  things: 
Clothing  the  vast  with  a  familiar  face; 
Reaching  its  right  hand  forth  to  greet  the  starry  race. 

"Wondrously  near  and  clear  the  great  warm  fires 
Stare  from  the  blue;  so  shows  the  cottage  light 
To  the  field  labourer  whose  heart  desires 
The  old  folk  by  the  nook,  the  welcome  bright 
From  the  house-wife  long  parted  from  at  dawn — 
So  the  star  villages  in  God's  great  depths  withdrawn. 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  31 

"  Nearer  to  Thee,  not  by  delusion  led, 
Though  there  no  house  fires  burn  nor  bright  eyes  gaze: 
We  rise,  but  by  the  symbol  charioted, 
Through  loved  things  rising  up  to  Love's  own  ways: 
By  these  the  soul  unto  the  vast  has  wings 
And  sets  the  seal  celestial  on  all  mortal  things." 

His  relations  with  nature  are  set  forth  In  a  little 
poem  entitled  "Dust,"  one  of  the  most  profound 
poetic  expressions  in  literature  of  a  philosophy  of 
the  spirit. 

"  I  heard  them  In  their  sadness  say, 
'The  earth  rebukes  the  thought  of  God; 
We  are  but  embers  wrapped  in  clay 
A  little  nobler  than  the  sod.' 

"  But  I  have  touched  the  lips  of  clay, 
Mother,  thy  rudest  sod  to  me 
Is  thrilled  with  fire  of  hidden  day, 
And  haunted  by  all  mystery." 

Were  it  not  for  the  impelling  quest  of  the  spiritual 
life,  A.  E.  could  perhaps  have  been  content,  as 
many  poets  have  been  content,  to  express  the 
beauty  of  nature  for  the  sake  of  that  beauty  it- 
self, to  express  with  a  frank  paganism  the  joy  of 
material  things  in  the  adventure  of  life,  to  find, 
in  what  to  him  is  symbol,  the  very  essence  of  being. 
There  are,  in  his  verse,  many  indications  that 


32  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

such  might  have  been  the  case,  and  these  lie  in 
the  rare  but  exquisite  descriptions  of  external  na- 
ture, or,  more  often,  of  the  opalescent  twilight  sky- 
as  the  charioting  symbols.  "The  Memory  of 
Earth"  is  a  striking  example; 

"  In  the  wet  dusk  silver  sweet, 
Down  the  violet  scented  ways. 
As  I  moved  with  quiet  feet 
I  was  met  by  mighty  days. 

"On  the  hedge  the  hanging  dew 
Glassed  the  eve  and  stars  and  skies; 
While  I  gazed  a  madness  grew 
Into  thundered  battle  cries. 

"Where  the  hawthorn  glimmered  white. 
Flashed  the  spear  and  fell  the  stroke — 
Ah,  what  faces  pale  and  bright 
Where  the  dazzling  battle  broke! 

"There  a  hero-hearted  queen 
With  young  beauty  lit  the  van: 
Gone!  the  darkness  flowed  between 
All  the  ancient  wars  of  man. 

"While  I  paced  the  valley's  gloom 
Where  the  rabbits  pattered  near, 
Shone  a  temple  and  a  tomb 
With  the  legend  carven  clear: 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  33 

"'Time  put  by  a  myriad  fates 
That  her  day  might  dawn  in  glory; 
Death  made  wide  a  million  gates 
So  to  close  her  tragic  story."* 

And  "The  Great  Breath"  is  another: 

"  Its  edges  foamed  with  amethyst  and  rose, 
Withers  once  more  the  old  blue  flower  of  day: 
There  where  the  ether  like  a  diamond  glows 
Its  petals  fade  away. 

"A  shadowy  tumult  stirs  the  dusky  air; 
Sparkle  the  delicate  dews,  the  distant  snows; 
The  great  deep  thrills,  for  through  it  everywhere 
The  breath  of  beauty  blows. 

"I  saw  how  all  the  trembling  ages  past. 
Moulded  to  her  by  deep  and  deeper  breath, 
Neared  to  the  hour  when  beauty  breathes  her  last 
And  knows  herself  in  death." 

Or  these  lines  of  "Dusk:" 

"Dusk  wraps  the  village  in  its  dim  caress;^ 
Each  chimney's  vapour,  like  a  thin  grey  rod, 
Mounting  aloft  through  miles  of  quietness, 
Pillars  the  skies  of  God. 

"  Far  up  they  break  or  seem  to  break  their  line. 
Mingling  their  nebulous  crests  that  bow  and  nod 
Under  the  light  of  those  fierce  stars  that  shine 
Out  of  the  calm  of  God. 


34  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

"Only  in  clouds  and  dreams  I  felt  those  souls 
In  the  abyss,  each  fire  hid  in  its  clod; 
From  which  in  clouds  and  dreams  the  spirit  rolls 
Into  the  vast  of  God." 

But,  as  A.  E.  himself  has  written: — 

"Away!  the  great  life  calls;  I  leave 
For  Beauty,  Beauty's  rarest  flower; 
For  Truth,  the  lips  that  ne'er  deceive; 
For  Love,  I  leave  Love's  haunted  bower." — 

and  these  moments  are  but  the  influences  toward 
the  exalted  mood  of  the  spirit.  Of  purely  earthly 
things  he  has  written  with  great  beauty;  the  soft, 
veiled  colors  of  Irish  landscape  are  in  his  verses, 
for  A.  E.  is  painter  as  well  as  poet,  and,  like  other 
painter  poets,  he  has  delighted  to  reproduce  in  his 
verse  somewhat  of  the  glory  that  appeals  to  the 
eye.  He  has  written,  too,  of  love,  although  of 
love,  not  in  its  passion,  but  in  the  calm  and  the 
quietude  of  soul  that  it  engenders,  and  in  the 
spiritual  desires  which  as  spirit  it  arouses,  but 
which  as  a  thing  of  earth  it  leaves  unfulfilled: — 

"What  is  the  love  of  shadowy  lips 
That  know  not  what  they  seek  or  press. 
From  whom  the  lure  for  ever  slips 
And  fails  their  phantom  tenderness  ^ 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  35 

"The  mystery  and  light  of  eyes 
That  near  to  mine  grow  dim  and  cold; 
They  move  afar  in  ancient  skies 
Mid  flame  and  mystic  darknessrolled. 

"O  beauty,  as  thy  heart  o'erflows 
In  tender  yielding  unto  me, 
A  vast  desire  awakes  and  grows 
Unto  forgetfulness  of  thee." 

In  a  degree,  A.  E.'s  poetry  is  a  reaction  to  the 
philosophy  of  Catholicism,  a  protest  against  the 
creed  which  decrees  punishment  for  the  soul  that 
has  committed  acts  that  it  never  promised  not  to 
commit.  He  has  voiced  in  certain  poems  the  plea 
which  Frederick  Ryan  embodied  in  "Criticism 
and  Courage,"  for  the  freedom  of  intellect  from 
the  dogma  of  religion.  His  belief  in  the  cyclic 
life  of  the  soul — whether  it  be  called  theosophy  or 
Platonism  matters  little — involves  also  a  belief 
in  the  eternal  freedom  of  the  will: 

"The  power  is  ours  to  make  or  mar 
Our  fate  as  on  the  earliest  morn, 
The  Darkness  and  the  Radiance  are 

Creatures  within  the  spirit  born. 
Yet,  bathed  in  gloom  too  long,  we  might 
Forget  how  we  imagined  light." 


36  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

and  this  doctrine  has  accentuated  the  points  of 
difference  between  his  creed  and  that  of  the  greater 
number  of  his  countrymen.  Conceiving,  as  he 
does,  that  the  soul  of  man  is  a  part  of  the  world- 
spirit,  it  becomes  impossible  for  him  to  postulate 
a  deity  to  whom  the  control  of  man's  destiny  is 
intrusted;  to  him  man  is  God  in  the  degree  that 
his  soul  is  in  harmony  with  the  spiritual  life  of  the 
world,  and  this  harmony  is  attained  more  fre- 
quently in  suffering  than  in  joy.  Thus,  for  him, 
pain  is  not  a  punishment  for  sin,  but  the  giver  of 
knowledge,  the  experience  encountered  by  the 
spirit  in  its  quest  for  unity.  To  this  belief  he  has 
given  expression  in  "The  Man  to  the  Angel": — 

"  I  have  wept  a  million  tears; 
Pure  and  proud  one,  where  are  thine, 
What  the  gain  though  all  thy  years 
In  unbroken  beauty  shine? 

"  All  your  beauty  can  not  win 
Truth  we  learn  in  pain  and  sighs: 
You  can  never  enter  in 
To  the  circle  of  the  wise. 

"  They  are  but  the  slaves  of  light 
Who  have  never  known  the  gloom, 
And  between  the  dark  and  bright 
Willed  in  freedom  their  own  doom. 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  37 

"  Think  not  in  your  pureness  there, 
That  our  pain  but  follows  sin: 
There  are  fires  for  those  who  dare 
Seek  the  throne  of  might  to  win. 

**  Pure  one,  from  your  pride  refrain: 
Dark  and  lost  amid  the  strife 
I  am  myriad  years  of  pain 
Nearer  to  the  fount  of  life. 

*'  When  defiance  fierce  is  thrown 
At  the  god  to  whom  you  bow. 
Rest  the  lips  of  the  Unknown 
Tenderest  upon  my  brow." 

But  it  is  less  as  a  philosopher  of  protest  that 
A.  E.  will  be  remembered  than  as  the  poet  of  the 
spirit,  the  Platonist,  the  believer  in  the  dignity 
of  the  soul  of  man,  the  worshipper  of  the  spirit  of 
nature.  He  represents  the  national  spirit  of  Ire- 
land to  a  peculiar  degree,  for  he  is  the  singer  of 
that  other  world  of  which  this  is  but  the  shadow, 
that  universe  of  the  spirit  that  in  Ireland,  because 
of  her  wrongs,  has  dominated  the  mind  of  men  to 
the  exclusion  of  the  material  world  of  existence. 
He  represents  above  all  her  spirituality,  her  hope, 
her  aspiration,  and  the  love  of  the  beauty  of  her 
landscape,  and  it  is  in  him  that  Ireland  has  found 
her  fullest  expression  in  modern  poetry.     And  it 


38  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

is  in  his  noblest  poem,  "Reconciliation,'*  that  one 
may  find  the  resolution  of  that  mystic  ecstasy 
of  spirit  in  which  the  visionary  attains  unity  with 
the  Oversoul: — 

"I  begin  through  the  grass  once  again  to  be  bound  to 

the  Lord 
I  can  see,  through  a  face  that  has  faded,  the  face  full 

of  rest 
Of  the  earth,  of  the  mother,  my  heart  with  her  heart 

in  accord. 
As  I  lie  'mid  the  cool  green  tresses  that  mantle  her 

breast. 
I  begin  with  the  grass  once  again  to  be  bound  to  the 

Lord. 

*'By  the  hand  of  a  child  I  am  led  to  the  throne  of  the 

King 
For  a  touch  that  now  fevers  me  not  is  forgotten  and 

far. 
And  His  infinite  sceptered  hands  that  sway  us  can 

bring 
Me  in  dreams  from  the  laugh  of  a  child  to  the  song 

of  a  star. 
On  the  laugh  of  a  child  I  am  borne  to  the  joy  of  the 

King." 

In  that  one  of  his  essays  in  "Ideas  of  Good  and 
Evil"  (1903)  entitled  "What  Is  Popular  Poetry.?" 
William  Butler  Yeats  has  told  us  of  the  genesis 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  39 

of  his  art.  It  was  in  the  activity  of  a  "Young 
Ireland"  society,  of  which  he  had  become  a  mem- 
ber, that  his  attention,  and  that  of  other  young 
men,  was  turned  toward  the  ballad  makers  of 
Ireland,  and  toward  Ferguson,  Allingham  and 
Davis  and  Mangan,  and  that  he,  together  with 
others  who  partook  both  of  his  political  principles 
and  his  literary  taste,  became  ambitious  that 
Ireland  should  possess  a  national  poetry  of  true 
literary  merit.  "I  thought  one  day,"  he  has 
written,  "if  somebody  could  make  a  style  which 
would  not  be  an  English  style  and  yet  would  be 
musical  and  full  of  colour,  many  others  would 
catch  fire  from  him,  and  we  would  have  a  really 
great  school  of  ballad  poetry  in  Ireland.  If  these 
poets,  who  have  never  ceased  to  fill  the  newspapers 
and  the  ballad-books,  had  a  good  tradition  they 
would  write  beautifully  and  move  everybody  as 
they  move  me.  Then  a  little  later  on  I  thought 
if  they  had  something  else  to  write  about  besides 
political  opinions,  if  more  of  them  would  write 
about  the  beliefs  of  the  people  like  Allingham,  or 
about  old  legends  like  Ferguson,  they  would  find 
it  easier  to  get  a  style.  Then  with  a  deliberate- 
ness  that  still  surprises  me,  for  in  my  heart  of 
hearts  I  have  never  been  quite  certain  that  one 


40  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

should  be  more  than  an  artist,  that  even  patriotism 
is  more  than  an  impure  desire  in  an  artist,  I  set 
to  work  to  find  a  style  and  things  to  write  about 
that  the  ballad  writers  might  be  the  better. 

"They  are  no  better,  I  think,  and  my  desire  to 
make  them  so  was,  it  may  be,  one  of  the  illusions 
Nature  holds  before  one,  because  she  knows  that 
the  gifts  she  has  to  give  are  not  worth  troubling 
about.  .  .  .  She  wanted  a  few  verses  from  me,  and 
because  it  would  not  have  seemed  worth  while 
taking  so  much  trouble  to  see  my  books  lie  on  a 
few  drawing  room  tables,  she  filled  my  head  with 
thoughts  of  making  a  whole  literature,  and  plucked 
me  out  of  the  Dublin  art  schools  where  I  should 
have  stayed  drawing  from  the  round,  and  sent  me 
into  a  library  to  read  bad  translations  from  the 
Irish,  and  at  last  down  into  Connaught  to  sit  by 
turf  fires.  I  wanted  to  write  'popular  poetry* 
like  those  Irish  poets,  for  I  believed  that  all  good 
literatures  were  popular  .  .  .  and  hated  what  I 
called  the  coteries.  I  thought  that  one  must 
write  without  care,  for  that  was  of  the  coteries, 
but  with  a  gusty  energy  that  would  put  all  straight 
if  it  came  out  of  the  right  heart,  .  .  . 

From  that  day  to  this  I  have  been  busy  among 
the  verses  and  stories  that  the  people  make  for 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  41 

themselves,  but  I  had  been  busy  a  very  little  while 
before  I  knew  that  what  we  call  popular  poetry 
never  came  from  the  people  at  all."  And  he  goes 
on  to  say  that  true  popular  poetry  relies  upon  a 
tradition  of  ideas  and  of  speech,  just  as  the  poetry 
of  "the  coteries"  relies  upon  a  written  tradition, 
and  that  both  the  written  and  the  unwritten  tra- 
dition play  no  part  in  that  poetry  which  is  "of  the 
middle  class,"  which  contains  no  expression  of 
idea  or  emotion  that  is  not  self-evident  in  the 
verse  alone,  and  which  is  characterized  by  "that 
straightforward  logic,  as  of  newspaper  articles, 
which  so  tickles  the  ears  of  the  shopkeepers." 
This  theory  finds  its  logical  complement  in  the 
views  expressed  in  two  earlier  essays  in  the  same 
volume,  "The  Symbolism  of  Poetry"  and  "Sym- 
bolism In  Painting"  In  which  the  poet  writes  of 
his  belief  that  poetry  moves  us  because  of  its 
symbolism,  and  that  symbols,  created  out  of  the 
tradition  of  centuries,  emotional  and  intellectual, 
are  the  record  of  man's  spiritual  life,  and  afford 
him  the  sole  refuge  from  the  externality  that  we 
call  experience,  in  that  spiritual  essence  of  which 
the  soul  lies  dreaming. 

Yeats's   first   volume,   published   in    1889   ^^^ 
containing,  besides  "The  Wanderings  of  Oisin," 


42  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

a  scene  from  his  earliest  play,  "The  Island  of 
Statues"  (1885),  and  a  little  play,  "Mosada" 
(1886),  and  the  first  versions  of  some  of  the  poems 
and  ballads  by  which  he  is  most  likely  to  be  re- 
membered, showed  no  traces  of  the  influences, 
literary  and  artistic,  by  which  the  character  of  his 
later  work  has  been  so  largely  determined.  "The 
Wanderings  of  Oisin  "  is  the  first  fruit  of  his  read- 
ing in  the  libraries,  a  retelling  of  the  old  Irish 
legend  of  the  colloquy  between  Oisin,  the  last  of 
the  Fianna,  and  St.  Patrick.  The  legend  runs 
that  Oisin,  the  son  of  Finn,  was  sought  by  Neave, 
a  beautiful  maiden  from  the  Land  of  the  Ever 
Young,  and  rode  with  her  over  the  sea  until  he 
came  to  her  abiding  place.  There,  beguiled  by 
her  beauty,  he  lived  for  three  hundred  years,  which 
to  him  seemed  as  three,  but  often  longed  for  the 
companionship  of  his  fellow  heroes.  In  order  to 
appease  him,  Neave  distracted  him  with  many 
adventures,  but  these  did  not  serve,  and  finally 
she  set  him  upon  the  magic  horse  and  sent  him 
over  the  sea  to  Ireland,  warning  him  that  if  he 
dismounted  he  would  never  be  able  to  return  to 
her.  Arriving  in  Ireland,  he  found  all  changed. 
The  men  were  miserable  and  weak,  they  sang  no 
longer  the  joyous  songs  of  old,  and  in  the  place  of 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  43 

the  raths  of  the  king  were  the  churches  of  a  new 
and  dismal  religion.  He  learned  that  the  Fianna 
had  become  merely  a  legend,  that  all  had  been 
dead  for  two  centuries  and  more,  and  filled  with 
sadness,  he  planned  to  return  to  Neave.  On  the 
shore  some  men,  trying  to  move  a  sack  of  sand, 
fell,  crushed  by  its  weight,  and  Oisin,  stooping 
from  his  horse,  pitched  the  sack  five  yards  with 
his  hand.  But  the  effort  broke  his  saddle  girth, 
he  fell  in  the  roadway,  the  horse  disappeared,  and 
bowed  with  the  weight  of  three  centuries  he  lost 
all  hope.  To  him  then  comes  St.  Patrick,  who 
has  heard  of  his  former  prowess,  and  wishes  to 
know  of  his  "three  centuries  of  dalliance  with  a 
demon  thing."  Oisin  tells  his  story,  and  inquir- 
ing what  has  become  of  the  Fianna,  learns  that 
they  have  been  doomed  to  eternal  damnation. 
Thereupon  he  recants  his  profession  of  Chris- 
tianity, preferring  to  be  with  his  comrades  even  in 
hell,  to  being  in  heaven  among  the  weak  who  take 
no  joy  in  life.  The  legend  as  Yeats  has  treated  it 
breathes  something  of  the  same  intellectual  hon- 
esty, something  of  the  same  pagan  view  of  the 
joylessness  of  Christianity  that  one  finds  in  the 
tale  of  "Aucassin  and  Nicolette";  it  has  a  certain 
philosophic   value,    quite   apart   from    its   poetic 


44  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

treatment,  in  the  vigor  with  which  it  portrays 
the  clash  between  the  new  ideals  and  the  old. 
But  the  distinctive  beauty  of  "The  Wanderings 
of  Oisin,"  as  of  all  the  work  included  in  Yeats's 
earliest  volume,  is  neither  narrative  nor  dramatic, 
although  he  has  given  us  examples  of  his  manip- 
ulation of  both  of  these  methods  of  treatment, 
but  lyrical.  Patrick  and  Oisin  represent  less  two 
opposing  schools  of  thought  than  two  different 
kinds  of  feeling  about  life,  and  hence  two  differ- 
ent values  set  upon  it.  It  would  be  idle  to  say 
that  the  paganism  of  Oisin  is  less  spiritual  than 
the  Christianity  of  Patrick,  but  it  is  perfectly 
true  that  their  spirituality  is  that  of  emotion; 
neither  reacts  to  life  in  terms  of  thought,  but  in 
their  feeling.  Oisin  is  in  love  with  the  visible 
beauty  of  life,  with  action,  with  the  external,  and 
with  the  familiar  spirits  that  inhabit  nature.  To 
Patrick  these  things  mean  nothing,  his  interest 
lies  in  a  life  not  of  this  world,  to  him  the  soul  is  of 
supreme  importance,  and  his  emotion  finds  its 
expression  as  naturally  in  asceticism  as  that  of 
Oisin  in  exuberance.  It  is,  however,  in  the  sug- 
gestion of  emotion  through  pictures  of  beauty  in 
nature  and  of  that  imaginative  beauty  which  he 
places  in  the  land  of  faery,  that  Yeats  excels  in 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  45 

this  earliest  volume,  although  in  certain  poems,  of 
which  "King  GoU"  is  the  most  notable  example, 
there  is  present  that  haunting  beauty  of  a  twilight 
world  which  is  his  essential  contribution  to  con- 
temporary poetic  feeling. 

Yeats's  career  as  a  lyric  poet  practically  closed 
in  1899  when  he  began  to  devote  his  entire  atten- 
tion to  writing  for  the  theater,  the  interest  always 
nearest  his  heart.  He  had  by  then  already 
written,  besides  the  two  plays  of  his  youth  since 
withdrawn,  "Mosada"  (1886)  and  "The  Island 
of  Statues"  (1885);  "The  Countess  Cathleen" 
(1892-97)  and  "The  Land  of  Heart's  Desire" 
(1894).  Since  1899  he  has  published  but  one 
volume  of  verse,  "The  Wind  Among  the  Reeds" 
(1902),  and  the  few  songs  interspersed  in  his  plays. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  1902  he  determined 
to  write  all  of  his  long  poems  for  the  theater,  and 
his  short  ones  for  the  psaltery,  an  instrument  which 
was  constructed  for  him  by  Arnold  Dolmetsch, 
who  became  interested  in  Yeats's  experiments  at 
the  Abbey  in  the  rendering  of  dramatic  poetry. 
But  this  resolution  did  not  change  the  essential 
character  of  his  poetry,  and  although  his  theories 
of  dramatic  and  lyric  expression  have  undoubtedly 
influenced  the  interpretation  of  his  plays  by  the 


46  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

Abbey  company,  the  diction  which  he  invented, 
and  which  was  first  employed  by  Miss  Florence 
Farr,  is  no  longer  used  even  in  the  presentation  of 
his  own  plays. 

There  are  two  dominant  motives  in  his  lyric 
poetry,  love  of  woman  and  the  cult  of  the  mystic; 
and  to  these  must  be  added,  although  in  a  lesser 
degree,  the  love  of  external  nature  which  influenced 
the  composition  of  "The  Lake  Isle  of  Innisfree," 
and  which  he  has  since  repudiated.  In  both  of 
these  themes  he  has  excelled,  and  in  his  treat- 
ment of  both  he  has  made  a  distinct  and  unique 
contribution  to  the  poetry  of  English  literature. 

In  order  to  understand  in  just  what  this  con- 
tribution consists,  it  will  be  necessary  to  refer  to 
the  philosophy  upon  which  his  poetry  is  founded, 
and  of  which  he  has  written  in  explanation  in 
several  essays.  It  is  important  to  note,  however, 
that  for  the  most  part  these  essays  were  written 
after  the  turning  point  in  his  poetic  career,  in  1899, 
and  that  although  he  had  been  both  an  editor  and  a 
critic  of  modern  Irish  literature  in  the  years  imme- 
diately preceding,  the  formulation  of  his  phil- 
osophy and  of  his  esthetics  in  criticism  was  not 
accomplished  until  after  he  had  turned  from  lyric 
poetry  to  the  drama.    At  first  sight,  it  might  be 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  47 

said  that  Yeats,  like  Coleridge,  became  a  phil- 
osopher and  a  critic  only  when  his  poetic  inspira- 
tion was  at  its  lowest  ebb,  were  it  not  for  the  fact 
that  his  interest  in  the  philosophy  of  magic  and 
the  psychology  of  mysticism  can  be  dated  as  early 
as  1886,  when  he  was  a  member  of  the  Hermetic 
Society,  of  which  A.  E.  was,  and  still  is,  the  leader. 
It  is  difficult,  therefore,  to  account  for  the  change 
in  the  character  of  his  poetry,  to  explain  just  what 
was  the  influence  that  turned  his  verse  from  the 
path  of  explicit  and  melodious  lyricism  into  one 
of  subtle  intention  clothed  in  obscure  symbols. 
On  the  basis  of  internal  evidence  the  task  is  im- 
possible; all  that  can  be  said  is  that  such  a  change 
did  take  place  about  1895,  ^^^  that  the  poet  him- 
self has  supplied,  in  his  essays,  some  commentary 
on  his  work.  For  the  purpose  of  making  clear  the 
attitude  of  his  later  work,  three  passages  may  be 
quoted  from  his  essays;  the  first  from  "Symbolism 
in  Painting,"  the  second  from  "Symbolism  in 
Poetry"  and  the  third  from  "Magic." 

"All  art  that  is  not  mere  story- telling,  or  mere 
portraiture,  is  symbolic,  and  has  the  purpose  of 
those  symbolic  talismans  which  medieval  magi- 
cians made  with  complex  colours  and  forms,  and 
bade  their  patients  ponder  over  daily,  and  guard 


48  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

with  holy  secrecy;  for  it  entangles,  in  complex 
colours  and  forms,  a  part  of  the  Divine  Essence. 
A  person  or  a  landscape  that  is  a  part  of  a  story 
or  a  portrait,  evokes  but  so  much  emotion  as  the 
story  or  the  portrait  can  permit  without  loosening 
the  bonds  that  make  it  a  story  or  a  portrait;  but 
if  you  liberate  a  person  or  a  landscape  from  the 
bonds  of  motives  and  their  actions,  causes  and 
their  effects,  and  from  all  bonds  but  the  bonds  of 
your  love,  it  will  change  under  your  eyes,  and 
become  a  symbol  of  an  infinite  emotion,  a  per- 
fected emotion,  a  part  of  the  Divine  Essence;  for 
we  love  nothing  but  the  perfect,  and  our  dreams 
make  all  things  perfect,  that  we  may  love  them. 
Religious  and  visionary  people,  monks  and  nuns, 
medicine-men  and  opium-eaters,  see  symbols  in 
their  trances;  for  religious  and  visionary  thought 
is  thought  about  perfection  and  the  way  to  per- 
fection; and  symbols  are  the  only  things  free 
enough  from  all  bonds  to  speak  of  perfection." 
"If  people  were  to  accept  the  theory  that  poetry 
moves  us  because  of  its  symbolism,  what  change 
should  one  look  for  in  the  manner  of  our  poetry .'' 
A  return  to  the  way  of  our  fathers,  a  casting  out 
of  descriptions  of  nature  for  the  sake  of  nature,  of 
the  moral  law  for  the  sake  of  the  moral  law,  a 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  49 

casting  out  of  all  anecdotes  and  of  that  brooding 
over  scientific  opinion  that  so  often  distinguished 
the  central  flame  in  Tennyson,  and  of  that  vehe- 
mence that  would  make  us  do  or  not  do  certain 
things;  or,  in  other  words,  we  should  come  to 
understand  that  the  beryl  stone  was  enchanted 
by  our  fathers  that  it  might  unfold  the  pictures 
in  its  heart,  and  not  to  mirror  our  own  excited 
faces,  or  the  boughs  waving  outside  the  window. 
With  this  change  of  substance,  this  return  to 
imagination,  this  understanding  that  the  laws  of 
art,  which  are  the  hidden  laws  of  the  world,  can 
alone  bind  the  imagination,  would  come  a  change 
of  style,  and  we  would  cast  out  of  serious  poetry 
those  energetic  rhythms,  as  of  a  man  running, 
which  are  the  invention  of  the  will  with  its  eyes 
always  on  something  to  be  done  or  undone;  and 
we  would  seek  out  those  wavering,  meditative, 
organic  rhythms,  which  are  the  embodiment  of 
the  imagination,  that  neither  desires  nor  hates, 
because  it  has  done  with  time,  and  only  wishes  to 
gaze  upon  some  reality,  some  beauty;  nor  would  it 
be  any  longer  possible  for  anybody  to  deny  the  im- 
portance of  form,  in  all  its  kinds,  for  although  you 
can  expound  an  opinion  or  describe  a  thing  when 
your  words  are  not  quite  well  chosen,  you  cannot 


50  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

give  a  body  to  something  that  moves  beyond  the 
senses,  unless  your  words  are  as  subtle,  as  complex, 
as  full  of  mysterious  life  as  the  body  of  a  flower  or 
of  a  woman.  The  form  of  sincere  poetry,  unlike 
the  form  of  popular  poetry,  may  indeed  be  some- 
times obscure  or  ungrammatical  as  in  some  of  the 
best  of  the  Songs  of  Innocence  and  Experience, 
but  it  must  have  the  perfections  that  escape  anal- 
ysis, the  subtleties  that  have  a  new  meaning  every 
day,  and  it  must  have  all  this  whether  it  be  but  a 
little  song  made  out  of  a  moment  of  dreamy  in- 
dolence, or  some  great  epic  made  out  of  the  dreams 
of  one  poet  and  of  a  hundred  generations  whose 
hands  were  never  weary  of  the  sword." 

"I  believe  in  the  practice  and  philosophy  of 
what  we  have  agreed  to  call  magic,  in  what  I  must 
call  the  evocation  of  spirits  though  I  do  not  know 
what  they  are,  in  the  power  of  creating  magical 
illusions,  in  the  visions  of  truth  in  the  depths  of 
the  mind  when  the  eyes  are  closed;  and  I  believe 
in  three  doctrines,  which  have,  as  I  think,  been 
handed  down  from  early  times,  and  been  the 
foundations  of  nearly  all  magical  practices.  These 
doctrines  are — 

"  (i)  That  the  borders  of  our  mind  are  ever 
shifting,  and  that  many  minds  can  flow  into  one 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  51 

another,  as  it  were,  and  create  or  reveal  a  single 
mind,  a  single  energy. 

"  (2)  That  the  borders  of  our  memories  are  as 
shifting,  and  that  our  memories  are  a  part  of  one 
great  memory,  the  memory  of  Nature  herself. 

"  (3)  That  this  great  mind  and  great  memory 
can  be  evoked  by  symbols." 

In  these  three  quotations  are  summed  up  the 
cardinal  points  of  his  philosophy  and  of  his  es- 
thetics; and  they  serve  to  explain  the  deliberate 
intention  underlying  much  of  his  poetry.  But  in 
no  sense  is  Yeats's  poetry  expressive  of  a  positive 
philosophy  of  life,  and  this  for  two  reasons.  His 
view  of  life  is  purely  negative,  and  does  not  par- 
take of  the  affirmation  of  life  that  is  found  in  the 
poetry  of  another  mystic,  A.  E.;  and  the  philos- 
ophy of  his  art  is  founded  upon  an  explicit  denial 
of  Arnold's  theory  that  poetry  is  "a  criticism  of 
life."  Indeed,  for  him,  the  function  of  poetry  is 
to  produce  in  the  hearer,  through  the  rhythm  of 
the  verse,  a  psychological  condition  bordering 
upon  trance,  and  then  evoke  "the  great  mind 
and  great  memory"  through  symbols.  In  other 
words,  the  purpose  of  his  poetry  is  to  play  upon 
those  moods  and  emotions  that  have  no  place  in 
the  waking  life  of  energy  and  activity.     And  in 


52  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

this  theory  lies  the  core  of  both  his  theory  of  art, 
and  his  philosophy  of  life.  He  has  expressed  this 
view  of  life  in  some  very  beautiful  lines  in  "The 
Shadowy  Waters  "  (1900),  which  since  they  con- 
dition the  fundamental  attitude  of  all  his  poetry, 
may  well  be  quoted  here. 

"All  would  be  well 
Could  we  but  give  us  wholly  to  the  dreams, 
And  get  into  their  world  that  to  the  sense 
Is  shadow,  and  not  linger  wretchedly 
Among  substantial  things;  for  it  is  dreams 
That  lift  us  to  the  flowing,  changing  world 
That  the  heart  longs  for.    What  is  love  itself, 
Even  though  it  be  the  lightest  of  light  love, 
But  dreams  that  hurry  from  beyond  the  world 
To  make  low  laughter  more  than  meat  and  drink, 
Though  it  but  set  us  sighing?    Fellow- wanderer, 
Could  we  but  mix  ourselves  into  a  dream, 
Not  in  its  image  on  the  mirror!" 

I  have  said  that  Yeats's  unique  contribution  to 
poetic  feeling  lies  in  this  dream-like,  haunting, 
other-world  spirit  that  his  poetry  evokes,  and 
that  this  has  been  expressed  most  characteristic- 
ally in  the  poems  dealing  with  love  and  with 
mysticism.  The  essential  quality  of  his  love- 
poetry  is  that  it  deals  with  love  not  as  the  pas- 
sionate and  compelling  emotion  that  we  know  it 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  53 

to  be  In  actual  life,  but  in  the  terms  of  a  life  totally 
different  than  the  experience  of  actuality,  an 
existence  that  is  wholly  disembodied,  a  life  purely 
of  the  spirit,  and  of  a  spirit  that  feels  but  faintly, 
vaguely,  and  with  a  passion  in  which  sex  plays  no 
part.  Crashaw,  the  first  English  mystic  poet  of 
importance,  wrote  of  religious  ecstasy  in  the  terms 
of  earthly  love;  the  Preraphaelites,  who  were 
symbolists,  dealt  with  love  as  a  thing  of  sense, 
in  symbols  and  ideals  that  have  their  foundation 
in  purely  physical  beauty,  but  Yeats  Is  the  first 
English  poet  who  has  treated  of  earthly  love  as  a 
thing  wholly  of  the  spirit,  existing  only  in  a  dream 
of  mystic  ecstasy,  in  which  physical  beauty  is 
totally  immaterial  excepting  as  the  visible  cloth- 
ing of  the  soul  itself.  This  is  the  distinguishing 
quality  of  such  a  poem  as  "The  Rose  of  the 
World":— 

"Who  dreamed  that  beauty  passes  like  a  dream? 
For  these  red  lips  for  all  their  mournful  pride, 
Mournful  that  no  new  wonder  may  betide, 
Troy  passes  away  in  one  high  funeral  gleam. 
And  Usna's  children  died. 

"We  and  the  labouring  world  are  passing  by: 
Amid  men's  souls,  that  waver  and  give  place, 
Like  the  pale  waters  in  their  wintry  race, 


54  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

Under  the  passing  stars,  foam  of  the  sky, 
Lives  on  this  lonely  face. 

"  Bow  down,  archangels,  in  your  dim  abode: 
Before  you  were,  or  any  hearts  to  beat, 
Weary  and  kind  one  lingered  by  His  seat; 
He  made  the  world  to  be  a  grassy  road 
Before  her  wandering  feet." 

or  of  these  lines: — 

"Fasten  your  hair  with  a  golden  pin, 
And  bind  up  every  wandering  tress; 
I  bade  my  heart  build  these  poor  rhymes: 
It  worked  at  them,  day  out,  day  in, 
Building  a  sorrowful  loveliness 
Out  of  the  battles  of  old  times. 

"  You  need  but  lift  a  pearl-pale  hand, 
And  bind  up  your  long  hair  and  sigh; 
And  all  men's  hearts  must  burn  and  beat; 
And  candle-like  foam  on  the  dim  sand. 
And  stars  climbing  the  dew-dropping  sky, 
Live  but  to  light  your  passing  feet." 

and  of  these,  in  which  "He  Tells  of  the  Perfect 
Beauty": — 

"O  cloud-pale  eyelids,  dream-dimmed  eyes. 
The  poets  labouring  all  their  days 
To  build  a  perfect  beauty  in  rhyme 
Are  overthrown  by  a  woman's  gaze 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  55 

And  by  the  unlabourlng  brood  of  the  skies: 
And  therefore  my  heart  will  bow,  when  dew 
Is  dropping  sleep,  until  God  burn  time. 
Before  the  unlabouring  stars  and  you." 

Of  the  poems  of  mysticism,  three  of  the  most 
famous  may  be  quoted,  since  they  too  express 
Yeats's  disbelief  in  the  life  of  actuality,  and  his 
conviction  that  the  life  of  dream  is  the  life  of 
reality: — 

"Time  drops  in  decay, 
Like  a  candle  burnt  out. 
And  the  mountains  and  woods 
Have  their  day,  have  their  day; 
What  one  in  the  rout 
Of  the  fire-born  moods 
Has  fallen  away?" 

*'0  sweet  everlasting  Voices,  be  still; 
Go  to  the  guards  of  the  heavenly  fold 
And  bid  them  wander  obeying  your  will 
Flame  under  flame,  till  Time  be  no  more; 
Have  you  not  heard  that  our  hearts  are  old. 
That  you  call  in  birds,  in  wind  on  the  hill, 
In  shaken  boughs,  in  tide  on  the  shore? 
O  sweet  everlasting  Voices,  be  still."    _* 

"Out-worn  heart,  in  a  time  out-worn. 
Come  clear  of  the  nets  of  wrong  and  right; 
Laugh,  heart,  again  in  the  grey  twilight, 
Sigh,  heart,  again  in  the  dew  of  the  morn. 


56  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

"Your  mother  Eire  is  always  young, 
Dew  ever  shining  and  twilight  grey; 
Though  hope  fall  from  you  and  love  decay, 
Burning  in  fires  of  a  slanderous  tongue. 

"Come,  heart,  where  hill  is  heaped  upon  hill: 
For  there  the  mystical  brotherhood 
Of  sun  and  moon  and  hollow  and  wood 
And  river  and  stream  work  out  their  will; 

"And  God  stand  winding  his  lonely  horn. 
And  time  and  the  world  are  ever  in  flight; 
And  love  is  less  kind  than  the  grey  twilight. 
And  hope  is  less  dear  than  the  dew  of  the  morn." 

It  seems  impossible  not  to  believe  that  these 
poems  and  others  like  them,  made,  as  w^as  the 
case  with  "Cap  and  Bells,"  out  of  a  w^orld  of 
dreams,  do  not  contain  Yeats's  most  character- 
istically personal  expression.  It  may  be  well 
asked,  however,  what  has  become  of  the  Yeats 
who  wrote: — 

"Know,  that  I  would  accounted  be 
True  brother  of  that  company, 
Who  sang  to  sweeten  Ireland's  wrong. 
Ballad  and  story,  rann  and  song." 

and  the  answer  is  not,  at  first  sight,  quite  evident. 
But  there  is  another  phase  of  Yeats's  work,  espe- 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  57 

dally  evident  in  such  plays  as  "The  Countess 
Cathleen  "  (1892-97),  and  "Cathleen  ni  Houli- 
han" (1902);  in  that  beautiful  collection  of  folk- 
lore, "The  Celtic  Twilight "  (1893),  and  in  "Stories 
of  Red  Hanrahan"  (1904);  in  poems  like  "The 
Ballad  of  Moll  Magee,"  "The  Ballad  of  Father 
O'Hart,"  "Down  by  the  Salley  Gardens"  and 
"The  Withering  of  the  Boughs"  in  which  the 
essence  of  Ireland  is  manifest.  He  himself  has 
written,  in  an  essay  upon  "The  Celtic  Element  in 
Literature,"  that  the  Celtic  movement  has  meant 
for  him  only  the  unsealing  of  the  fountain  of 
Celtic  tradition,  and  the  discovery  and  employ- 
ment of  its  beautiful  legend  and  folk-lore.  It 
is  by  busying  himself  with  this  fund  of  folk-lore 
and  tradition  that  he  has  come  to  feel  and  to  ex- 
press Ireland;  not,  indeed,  the  Ireland  of  Synge 
or  of  Lady  Gregory,  nor  that  of  the  younger  school 
of  playwrights,  nor  that  of  Doctor  Hyde,  but  the 
Ireland  of  the  imagination.  Zola's  definition  of 
art  as  nature  seen  through  a  temperament  is  pecu- 
liarly germane  to  the  interpretation  of  Yeats. 
And  although  during  certain  periods  of  his  de- 
velopment as  a  poet  temperament  has,  in  the  final 
analysis,  crowded  out  nature  from  his  verse,  that 
part  of  his  poetry  which  is  likely  to  prove  most 


58  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

enduring  expresses  not  only  the  spiritual  qualities 
of  the  imaginative  and  emotionally  sensitive  Irish 
peasant,  but  the  beautiful  landscape  of  the  western 
counties,  Mayo,  Sligo,  Galway,  the  natural  beauty 
of  which  has  been  accentuated  by  association  with 
the  noble  legends  of  the  past. 

Just  what,  it  may  be  asked,  is  the  nature  of  the 
literary  experience  that  awaits  the  reader  of 
Yeats's  poetry?  The  total  effect  of  his  verse  is 
emotional;  it  is  less  the  poetry  of  a  man  who,  like 
Lucretius,  or  Milton,  or  Wordsworth,  or  Tennyson, 
has  been  stirred  profoundly  by  ideas,  for  whom  the 
impelling  necessity  for  expression  was  the  result 
of  an  emotional  reaction  to  intellectual  conflict, 
than  that  of  a  spiritually  and  emotionally  sensitive 
personality,  keenly  aware  of  beauty,  whose  imag- 
ination has  been  quickened  by  the  nobility  and  the 
poetry  of  the  past,  a  man  who  has  little  in  com- 
mon with  the  temper  of  contemporary  life.  His 
attitude  toward  life  is  founded  upon  an  emotional 
philosophy,  upon  feeling  deeply  about  life  rather 
than  thinking  deeply  about  it,  upon  truth  revealed 
in  a  moment  of  spiritual  dilation  rather  than  upon 
truth  apprehended  and  made  by  the  intelligent 
exercise  of  the  reason.  In  other  words,  the  fun- 
damental attitude  of  his  poetry  is   that  of  the 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  59 

mystic  as  opposed  to  that  of. the  scientist;  indeed 
Yeats,  coming  as  he  did  after  Tennyson  and  after 
the  widespread  interest  in  science  that  preoccu- 
pied the  later  Victorians,  may  be  considered  as 
part  of  the  reactionary  movement  that  was  in- 
fluenced by  the  Preraphaelites,  which,  disbeliev- 
ing both  in  modern  science  and  in  modern  life, 
turned  toward  its  emotions  rather  than  to  its  in- 
telligence for  an  Interpretation  and  a  solution  of 
life,  and  sought  art  as  a  refuge.  Yeats  has  been 
influenced  in  his  feelings  about  life  by  Jacob 
Boehme  and  the  Rosicrucians,  and,  particularly, 
by  William  Blake;  less  perhaps  by  the  Blake  of 
the  "Songs  of  Innocence  and  Experience"  than 
by  the  Blake  of  "Jerusalem"  and  the  "Prophetic 
Books."  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that 
Yeats  Is  not  a  philosophic  poet  In  the  sense  that 
A.  E.  is  a  philosophic  poet;  the  philosophic  aspect 
of  his  poetry  lies  In  Its  form  rather  than  In  Its 
content;  like  John  Lylly,  John  Donne  and  Walter 
Pater,  he  has  a  philosophy  of  style,  but  his  view 
of  life  is  most  clearly  stated  not  in  his  poetry,  but 
in  his  essays.  He  is  preeminently  the  poet's  poet 
of  our  time,  for  his  Inspiration  has  come  less  from 
life  than  from  literature,  and  his  art  has  been  in- 
fluenced  and  moulded  by  the  contemplation  of 


6o  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

beautiful  things,  until,  from  a  poet  who  desired 
to  express  an  immediate  reaction  to  life,  he  de- 
veloped into  the  poet  of  our  time  whose  verse  has 
had  the  least  connection  with  contemporary  ac- 
tivity, and  whose  especial  contribution  has  been, 
to  borrow  a  phrase  from  A.  E.,  to  reveal  to  us 
"the  spirit  as  the  weaver  of  beauty." 
v/  William  Sharp,  who  from  1893  until  his  death 
in  1905  contributed  to  the  literature  of  the  Celtic 
renascence  in  prose  and  in  verse  over  the  pseu- 
donym of  "Fiona  MacLeod,"  was  influenced  by 
the  poetry  of  A.  E.  and  of  Yeats.  He  was  not  an 
Irishman,  having  been  born  in  1855  in  the  west 
highlands  of  Scotland;  as  a  young  man  he  went  to 
London,  and  there  came  under  the  influence  of 
D.  G.  Rossetti,  who  became  his  friend  and  liter- 
ary adviser.  He  experimented  with  poetry,  but 
achieved  his  reputation  as  a  critic  and  editor,  and 
later  as  a  writer  of  fiction.  In  1886  he  suffered  a 
severe  illness,  during  which  a  world  of  dream  and 
of  vision  was  opened  to  him,  and  upon  his  recov- 
ery he  interested  himself  in  psychic  research.  In 
1893  Fiona  Macleod  pubHshed  "Pharals,"  the 
first  of  a  long  series  of  prose  romances  the  author 
of  which  was  given  out  to  be  a  cousin  of  Mrs. 
Sharp's  for  whom  Sharp  acted  as  sponsor.     Be- 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  6 1 

cause  of  the  mystery  surrounding  "her,"  because 
of  Sharp's  known  fondness  for  mystification — he 
had  once  edited  and  written  a  whole  review  under 
eight  pseudonyms — ,  and  because  of  certain  de- 
ductions made  from  the  comparison  of  the  work 
of  Fiona  MacLeod  and  of  William  Sharp,  many 
critics  suspected  them  of  being  one  and  the  same 
person.  The  acknowledgment  of  their  identity 
was,  however,  made  public  only  in  191 2  by  the 
authoritative  publication  of  his  diaries  and  letters 
in  a  memoir  by  his  wife.  These  show  that  Sharp 
believed  himself  possessed  of  a  dual  existence;  a 
vivid  emotional  existence  that  he  personified  as 
Fiona  MacLeod,  and  his  crowded  life  as  novelist 
and  critic,  dependent  upon  his  writing  for  his 
livelihood,  the  life  of  William  Sharp.  The  dis- 
tinction seems  to  rest  upon  the  dominance  of  one 
mood  over  the  other;  the  emotional  mood  was 
that  of  Fiona,  the  intellectual,  that  of  Sharp.  In 
so  far  as  it  aff"ects  his  verse,  the  psychological 
problem  is  almost  negligible,  for  the  sole  advantage 
of  his  pseudonym  was  that  it  enabled  him  to 
write,  as  he  believed,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a 
woman,  in  such  poems  as  those  included  in  "From 
the  Heart  of  a  Woman,"  and,  in  certain  other 
poems,  to  indulge  without  fear  of  censure  in  an 


62  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

ecstatic  emotionalism  of  which,  as  the  keenly  in- 
tellectual critic,  he  may  have  been  suspicious. 

His  interest  as  a  poet  was  given  almost  wholly 
to  the  exploration  of  the  spiritual  world  revealed 
in  dreams,  and  to  the  body  of  legendary  lore 
common  to  Ireland  and  Scotland;  with  such  inter- 
ests it  is  not  surprising  that  the  chief  influences 
upon  his  poetic  expression  were  those  of  A.  E.  and 
of  William  Butler  Yeats.  In  "The  Dirge  of  the 
Four  Cities"  he  writes  like  Yeats,  and  in  "Dim 
Face  of  Beauty"  the  agreement  with  A.  E.  is 
quite  apparent.  But  although  he  was  largely 
imitative,  he  wrote  not  a  few  poems  of  distinction 
in  which  he  attained  an  utterance  of  his  own,  and 
it  is  surprising  to  find  this  utterance  so  completely 
different  from  the  heavily  laden  form  of  his  prose. 
He  is  at  his  best  in  little  poems  such  as  "The 
Vision":— 

"In  a  fair  place 

Of  whin  and  grass, 
I  heard  feet  pass 
Where  no  one  was. 

**  I  saw  a  face 

Bloom  like  a  flower — 
Nay,  as  the  rainbow  shower 
Of  a  tempestuous  hour. 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  63 

*'It  was  not  man,  nor  woman: 
It  was  not  human: 
But,  beautiful  and  wild 
Terribly  undefiled, 
I  knew  an  unborn  child." 

or  "Day  and  Night": — 

*'From  grey  to  dusk,  the  veils  unfold 
To  pearl  and  amethyst  and  gold — 
Thus  is  the  new  day  woven  and  spun: 

"From  glory  of  blue  to  rainbow-spray 
From  sunset-gold  to  violet-grey — 
Thus  is  the  restful  night  re-won." 

which,  in  spite  of  their  almost  lapidary  simplicity 
of  expression,  interpret  a  mood  with  singular 
beauty  and  fullness.  These  little  poems  express 
their  suggestion  almost  always  through  the  use  of 
pictures,  but  even  more  Important  than  this 
idyllic  quality  Is  the  striking  sense  of  word  color 
and  word  harmony  that  Sharp  must  have  possessed 
in  order  to  have  written  them.  In  the  Inevitabil- 
ity of  their  phrasing.  In  their  unity  of  form  and 
content,  in  their  delicate  interpretation  of  a  mood 
through  the  color  and  the  music  of  words,  they 
stand  in  the  front  rank  of  minor  poetry.  And  all 
the  poetry  that  Sharp  put  forth  under  the  name 
of  Fiona  MacLeod  is  essentially  that  of  a  spirit 


64  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

sensitive  to  the  fainter  shadings  of  emotion,  at  its 
best  the  revelation  of  subjective  nuances. 

In  dealing  with  Lionel  Johnson  we  come  to  a 
poet  the  best  of  whose  work  equals  in  value  any- 
thing that  English  poets  have  produced  during 
the  last  twenty-five  years.  If,  as  is  unfortunately 
the  case,  he  must  be  classed  among  the  minor 
poets,  it  is  rather  because  the  quantity  of  his  best 
work  is  very  small  than  because  it  is  deficient 
in  quality.  His  poetry  reflects  the  deep  and  abid- 
ing love  in  which  he  held  the  four  chief  influences 
in  his  spiritual  and  intellectual  life:  Winchester, 
his  school,  the  languages  and  literatures  of  Greece 
and  Rome,  Ireland,  and  the  religion  of  the  Church 
of  Rome.  His  life  was  brief,  and  tragic  in  its 
incompleteness.     He  died  in  1902. 

He  was  not,  like  A.  E.,  a  philosophic  poet,  nor 
like  Yeats,  an  innovator  in  spirit,  a  weaver  of 
strange  harmonies  in  beautiful  language.  His 
progenitor  in  the  verse  of  Ireland  was  Aubrey  de 
Vere,  between  whose  stately,  meditative  poems 
and  the  work  of  Lionel  Johnson  there  are  many 
points  of  contact.  He  belongs  rather  with  Francis 
Thompson  and  with  Mrs.  Meynell,  to  the  little 
group  of  meditative  poets  of  Catholicism  that 
flourished  during  the  last  two  decades  of  the  past 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  65 

century,  than  to  the  circle  of  so-called  decadents 
with  which  he  was  connected  by  the  ties  of  friend- 
ship. Unlike  Dowson  and  Symons,  and  the  other 
poets  of  the  nineties,  Johnson  was  not  a  roman- 
ticist; the  influence  of  Pater  and  of  Wilde  is  not 
felt  in  his  verse,  he  did  not  seek  to  express  the 
sordid  phases  of  physical  or  of  emotional  life,  he 
did  not  believe,  as  did  Yeats,  in  the  tenets  of  the 
"esthetic  movement."  He  was  in  every  sense 
of  the  word  a  classicist,  a  faultless  technician  in 
the  accepted  forms,  a  writer  of  poetry  that  ful- 
filled the  requirement  set  for  it  by  Milton — that 
it  be  simple,  sensuous  and  passionate.  He  was  a 
religious  mystic,  and  his  philosophy  of  life  was 
tinged  with  pantheism,  a  quality  that  is  rarely 
absent  from  the  poetry  of  those  of  an  innately 
religious  disposition  who  care  very  greatly  for 
nature.  In  his  devotion  to  the  cause  of  national- 
ism in  Ireland  and  to  the  Catholic  religion,  he 
found  himself  in  somewhat  the  same  position  as 
that  of  the  cavalier  poets  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, and  in  a  poem  entitled  "Mystic  and  Cava- 
lier" he  set  forth  his  reaction  to  the  life  of  his 
time: — 

"Go  from  me:  I  am  one  of  those,  who  fall. 
What!  hath  no  cold  wind  swept  your  heart  at  all, 


66  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

In  my  sad  company?    Before  the  end, 
Go  from  me,  dear  my  friend! 

"Yours  are  the  victories  of  light:  your  feet 
Rest  from  good  toil,  where  rest  is  brave  and  sweet, 
But  after  warfare  in  a  mourning  gloom, 
I  rest  in  clouds  of  doom. 

"Have  you  not  read  so,  looking  in  these  eyes? 
Is  it  the  common  light  of  the  pure  skies, 
Lights  up  their  shadowy  depths?    The  end  is  set: 
Though  the  end  be  not  yet. 

"When  gracious  music  stirs,  and  all  is  bright, 
And  beauty  triumphs  through  a  courtly  night; 
When  I  too  joy,  a  man  like  other  men: 
Yet,  am  I  like  them,  then? 

"And  in  the  battle,  when  the  horsemen  sweep 
Against  a  thousand  deaths,  and  fall  on  sleep: 
Who  ever  sought  that  sudden  calm,  if  I 
Sought  not?    Yet,  could  not  die. 

"Seek  with  thine  eyes  to  pierce  this  crystal  sphere: 
Canst  read  a  fate  there,  prosperous  and  clear? 
Only  the  mists,  only  the  weeping  clouds: 
Dimness,  and  airy  shrouds. 

"Beneath,  what  angels  are  at  work?    What  powers 
Prepare  the  secret  of  the  fatal  hours? 
See!  the  mists  tremble,  and  the  clouds  are  stirred: 
When  comes  the  calling  word  ? 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  G^ 

"The  clouds  are  breaking  from  the  crystal  ball, 
Breaking  and  clearing:  and  I  look  to  fall. 
When  the  cold  winds  and  airs  of  portent  sweep, 
My  spirit  may  have  sleep. 

"O  rich  and  sounding  voices  of  the  air! 
Interpreters  and  prophets  of  despair: 
Priests  of  a  fearful  sacrament!    I  come 
To  make  with  you  mine  home." 

In  several  singularly  noble  poems,  the  most  famous 
of  which  is  "Ways  of  War,"  dedicated  to  the  Irish 
patriot,  John  O'Leary,  he  recorded  a  passionate 
love  for  Ireland,  and  his  belief  that  her  glorious 
destiny  among  the  nations  would  work  Itself  out 
once  more  In  battle.  And  his  classical  learning 
was  such  that  he  was  able  to  write  many  of  his 
most  beautiful  religious  poems  in  Latin. 

The  chief  effect  of  his  poetry  upon  the  reader 
is  a  sense  of  the  power  of  his  deep  reflective  mood, 
a  sense  of  the  scholarly  and  cherishing  care  of  his 
expression,  a  feeling  that  he,  like  the  poets  of  the 
seventeenth  century  from  whom  he  learned  his 
technique,  was  a  master  of  melody  and  rhythm 
and  cadence.  Two  little  poems,  although  they 
do  not  deal  with  any  of  his  four  loves,  bring  this 
to  the  reader's  attention  with  characteristic  vivid- 
ness, and  to  this  end  may  be  quoted.     They  are 


68  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

entitled  "Harmonies,"  are  dedicated  to  Vincent 
O'Sullivan,  and  were  written  in  1889. 

I 

"  Sweet  music  lingers 
From  her  harpstrings  on  her  fingers, 
When  they  rest  in  mine: 
And  her  clear  glances 
Help  the  music,  whereto  dances, 

Trembling  with  an  hope  divine, 
Every  heart:  and  chiefly  mine. 

"  Could  she  discover 
All  her  heart  to  any  lover, 

She  who  sways  them  all  ? 
Yet  her  hand  trembles. 
Laid  in  mine:  and  scarce  dissembles. 
That  its  music  looks  to  fall 
Into  mine,  and  Love  end  all." 

II 

"The  airs,  that  best  belong. 
Upon  the  strings  devoutly  playing. 

Your  heart  devoutly  praying: 
Now  sound  your  passion,  full  and  strong. 

Past  all  her  fond  gainsaying. 

"First,  strangely  sweet  and  low. 
Slowly  her  careless  ears  entrancing: 

Then  set  the  music  dancing. 
And  wild  notes  flying  to  and  fro; 

Like  spirited  sunbeams  glancing. 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  69 

"The  melodies  will  stir 
Spirits  of  love,  that  still  attend  her: 

That  able  are  to  bend  her, 
By  subtile  arts  transforming  her; 

And  all  their  wisdom  lend  her. 

"Last,  loud  and  resolute, 
Ring  out  a  triumph  and  a  greeting! 

No  call  for  sad  entreating, 
For  she  will  grant  you  all  your  suit, 

Her  song  your  music  meeting." 

Of  Johnson's  generation  and  period,  and,  like 
him,  influenced  in  her  art  by  a  devout  belief  in 
Catholicism,  Mrs.  Katherlne  Tynan  Hinkson  has 
written  not  a  few  excellent  poems,  and  some 
stories  of  country  life  and  character.  Her  range 
in  poetry  is  more  limited  than  that  of  Johnson, 
her  mood  is  not  as  austere,  not  as  deeply  reflective, 
and  she  has  been  influenced  less  by  the  mystic 
aspect  of  her  religion.  She  has  chosen  to  express 
the  religious  ideals  that  found  embodiment  in  the 
life  and  in  the  teaching  of  Saint  Francis  of  Assisi, 
and  the  chief  characteristics  of  her  poetic  feeling 
are  a  certain  delicate  sympathy  with  the  weak, 
the  helpless,  with  children  and  with  animals,  and 
an  instinctive  love  for  the  beautiful  in  nature.  Of 
these  things  she  has  sung  with  charm,  and  often 


70  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

with  great  beauty,  but  her  verse  has  never 
achieved  the  distinguishing  flame  of  Johnson's, 
the  ecstasy  of  A.  E.'s,  the  exquisite  harmony  or 
the  haunting  beauty  of  Yeats's. 

Of  far  greater  importance,  both  as  an  influence 
upon  the  later  writers  of  the  renascence,  and  be- 
cause of  the  unusual  quality  of  his  own  poetic 
gifts,  are  the  two  volumes  of  poetry  that  Doctor 
Douglas  Hyde  has  published:  "Love  Songs  of 
Connacht"  (1894)  ^'^^  "Religious  Songs  of  Con- 
nacht"  (1906).  They  are  compilations  of  the 
folk-songs  of  a  single  province,  carefully  noted 
down,  edited  and  translated  by  Doctor  Hyde. 
The  original  poems  have  become  part  of  the  Gaelic 
literature  that  has  been  growing  up  in  Ireland,  but 
the  influence  of  Doctor  Hyde's  beautiful  transla- 
tions can  hardly  be  overestimated.  He  for  the 
first  time  employed  in  literature  the  peasant  dial- 
ect which  has  since  become  a  recognized  medium 
of  artistic  expression,  later  to  be  employed  by  one 
of  the  greatest  dramatists  of  modern  times,  John 
Millington  Synge.  The  chief  characteristic  of 
Doctor  Hyde's  prose  translations  of  Gaelic  poetry 
is  their  concreteness  of  expression;  the  use  of  Anglo- 
Irish  has  contributed  to  modern  English  letters 
not  so  much  a  new  vocabulary  as  a  way  of  look- 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  7 1 

ing  at  life  that,  coming  in  a  period  of  academic 
detachment,  excites  in  the  reader  the  superb 
shock  of  the  unexpectedly  inevitable.  This  dic- 
tion, picturesque,  romantic,  and,  as  some  of  us 
feel,  highly  imaginative,  cannot  be  acquired 
through  a  careful  choice  in  vocabulary;  it  depends 
upon  an  immediate  reaction  to  life  in  expression, 
a  reaction  that,  to  a  certain  extent,  is  wholly  un- 
conscious of  any  art.  It  depends,  also,  upon  an 
accuracy  of  observation  and  a  truth  in  the  regis- 
tering of  emotions  that  is  as  unconscious  of  its 
effect  as  that  of  a  child.  It  is  rather  the  result  of 
unsophisticated  observation,  untutored  in  what 
convention  demands  that  it  shall  see,  of  the  imme- 
diate and  vigorous  expression  of  whatever  experi- 
ence it  has  come  in  contact  with,  than  of  anything 
as  artificial  as  a  "style."  It  is  the  language  of 
emotional  excitement,  uncontrolled  by  convention, 
unsophisticated  in  its  observation  of  experience, 
immediate  in  its  expression,  and  like  all  highly 
imaginative  diction,  it  has  its  fundamental  basis 
in  the  accurate  vision  of  reality.  The  frequent 
inversion  of  word  order,  the  elision  of  words,  and 
numerous  other  characteristics  which  are  apt  to 
affect  the  reader  as  being  mere  tricks  of  style  lose 
their  apparent  artificiality  when  it  is  remembered 


72  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

that  Anglo-Irish,  as  it  is  actually  spoken  in  the 
west,  is  nothing  other  than  a  literal  translation  of 
idiomatic  Gaelic  into  English,  preserving  in  the 
transition  the  grammar,  the  word  order,  and  the 
diction  of  Gaelic.  Indeed,  Anglo-Irish  as  a  me- 
dium of  literary  expression  is  little  more  than  the 
substitution  of  English  words  for  the  original 
Gaelic. 

The  influence  of  Doctor  Hyde's  work  is  very 
evident  in  the  later  poetry  of  Alfred  Percival 
Graves  who,  having  been  born  in  1846,  may  justly 
be  regarded  as  the  dean  of  modern  Irish  letters, 
and  who  will  always  be  remembered  among  Irish- 
men as  the  author  of  the  rollicking  ballad  of 
"Father  O'Flynn."  His  earlier  work  is  chiefly 
lyrical  and,  like  Thomas  Moore,  he  claims  old 
Irish  melodies  as  the  source  of  his  inspiration. 
The  distinguishing  quality  of  his  lyrics  is  their 
abundant  humor;  this  and  their  singing  rhythms 
justify  the  comparison  between  Graves  and  Sam- 
uel Lover  made  by  Doctor  Hyde,  and  indicate  a 
further  comparison  between  much  of  his  work  and 
a  certain  mood  to  be  found  in  the  poetry  of  Burns. 
These  songs  are  chiefly  of  the  Irish  countryside, 
of  its  life,  of  its  characters,  of  its  aspirations; 
written  before  Doctor  Hyde  published  his  transla- 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  73 

tions  in  Anglo-Irish,  their  expression  is  that  of  an 
Englishman  recording  the  peculiarities  of  speech 
among  the  Irish.  In  his  later  work,  "Songs  of 
the  Gael"  (1908)  and  "A  Gaelic  Story  Telling" 
(1908),  he  has  preserved  both  his  humor  and  his 
lyrical  gifts  intact,  but,  as  Doctor  Hyde  himself 
had  noted,  the  Irish  renascence  has  produced  both 
a  change  of  feeling  and  a  change  in  the  medium 
of  expression  employed.  Many  of  these  poems 
are  translations  into  the  original  Irish  meter  from 
the  prose  of  Kuno  Meyer,  others  do  not  show  as 
directly  the  influence  of  the  rediscovery  of  old 
Celtic  legends,  but  implicit  in  all  of  Graves's 
later  work  is  a  certain  seriousness  of  attitude 
toward  Ireland  that  is  not  to  be  found  in  his 
earlier  poems. 

The  work  of  another  pioneer  in  the  translation 
of  folk-song.  Doctor  George  Sigerson,  is  of  great 
importance  in  having  indicated  the  direction  to 
be  taken  in  preserving  this  body  of  popular  art. 
His  labors  have  extended  over  a  period  of  forty 
years,  but  his  most  recent  volume,  "The  Saga 
of  King  Lir,"  published  as  lately  as  191 3,  betrays 
no  diminution  of  his  poetic  gifts.  He  was  among 
the  first  to  retell  the  old  legends  in  beautiful  and 
stately  verse  and  noble  prose.     His  "Bards  of  the 


74  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

Gael  and  Gall"  (1897)  is  a  treasure  house  for  the 
lover  of  Ireland's  folk-lore.  In  this  he  has  been 
followed  by  T.  W.  Rolleston,  critic,  poet  and  edi- 
tor, who  has  contributed  widely  to  scholarship 
and  to  literature  in  his  versions  of  the  old  legends. 
*'Deirdre"  (1897),  "Myths  and  Legends  of  the 
Celtic  Race"  (191 1),  and  "Sea  Spray"  (1909), 
evidence  not  only  his  scholarly  attitude  toward 
the  content  of  his  art;  but  also  the  distinction  of 
his  expression  in  both  poetry  and  prose.  Ameri- 
cans will  remember  him  gratefully  as  the  first  trans- 
lator into  German  of  Whitman's  "Leaves of  Grass." 
Among  the  feminine  poets  of  the  renascence 
there  are  not  a  few  with  as  sure  a  claim  to  nota- 
bility of  acdomplishment  as  that  of  Mrs.  Hink- 
son.  "Ethna  Carberry"  (Mrs.  Seumas  Mac- 
Manus)  has  writteh,  in  "The  Four  Winds  of 
Erin  "  (1901),  out  of  the  heart  of  the  sorrows  and 
the  dreams  of  Ireland  in  many  poems,  the  best 
known  of  which  is  "The  Passing  of  the  Gael." 
"Moira  O'Neill"  (Mrs.  Nesta  Higginson  Skrine) 
has  written  powerfully  of  her  love  of  the  country- 
side and  of  the  Irish  landscape,  in  "Songs  of  the 
Glens  of  Antrim  "  (1901),  while  Mrs.  Nora  Hopper 
Chesson  has  revealed  herself  a  master  of  poetic 
expression  and  has  clothed  eternal  emotions  in  the 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  75 

symbols  of  a  legendary  past.  Dora  Sigerson 
Shorter  (Mrs.  Clement  Shorter)  has  become 
known  chiefly  as  a  balladist;  her  "Collected 
Poems  "  (1907),  earned  the  high  praise  of  no  less 
discerning  a  critic  than  George  Meredith.  In  the 
lyric  form  her  ability  to  convey  reality,  to  render 
a  mood  in  a  few  deft  lines,  and  her  chief  excel- 
lences, compression,  restraint  and  dramatic  power 
are  no  less  apparent,  and  readers  will  find  her 
"New  Poems"  (1913)  and  "Madge  Linsey  and 
Other  Poems"  (1913),  equally  distinguished. 

In  1904  A.  E.  edited  a  little  volume  of  poems 
entitled  "New  Songs,"  comprising  a  selection 
from  the  poetry  of  eight  of  the  then  young  crafts- 
men and  craftswomen  in  verse  to  whom  he  had 
been  both  teacher  and  guide.  All  eight  have 
since  become  well  known  to  lovers  of  poetry  in 
Ireland,  and  have  thus  fulfilled  his  prediction  of 
their  fame.  Alice  Milligan  has  written  many 
patriotic  poems  of  noteworthy  excellence,  and  not 
a  few  having  as  their  subjects  episodes  famous  in 
the  legendary  history  of  Ireland.  Her  best  known 
work  is  comprised  in  "Hero  Lays"  (1908).  Eva 
Gore-Booth,  Susan  Mitchell  and  Ella  Young  have 
all  been  influenced  by  the  tendency  toward  a  mys- 
tic interpretation  of  life  that  has  found  its  most 


76  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

enduring  expression  in  the  poetry  of  A.  E.  himself. 
Miss  Gore-Booth's  volume  of  verse,  "The  Egyp- 
tian Pillar"  (1908),  is  remarkable  for  its  lyric 
cadence,  while  the  "Poems"  (1908),  of  Miss 
Young  possess  a  beauty  of  phrasing  that  is  dis- 
tinctly individual,  and  give  expression  to  an  almost 
religious  ecstasy.  Miss  Mitchell,  who  is  the  sec- 
retary of  the  I.  A.  0.  S.  and  one  of  the  founders  of 
the  United  Irishwomen,  has  written  in  "The 
Living  Chalice"  (1913),  some  rarely  beautiful 
poems,  finely  sustained  in  their  high  idealism,  and 
in  expression  marked  by  a  superb  frankness  of  im- 
agery and  symbol.  In  a  little  volume  called  "Aide 
to  the  Immortality  of  Certain  Persons  in  Ireland  " 
(1913),  she  has  satirized  with  great  humor  many 
of  the  well  known  figures  of  the  Celtic  renascence. 

Among  the  men  whose  work  is  represented  in 
"New  Songs"  are  Padraic  Colum,  Seumas  O'Sulli- 
van,ThomasKeohler  and  George  Roberts.  To  these 
names  must  be  added  those  of  Joseph  Campbell, 
Herbert  Trench,  Charles  Weekes,  James  Stephens, 
John  Millington  Synge,  Patrick  MacGill,  Thomas 
MacDonagh,  Seumas  MacManus,  Norreys  Jephson 
O'Connor,  and,  latest  of  all,  Francis  Ledwidge. 

Padraic  Colum  is,  although  undeservedly,  more 
widely  known  as  a  dramatist  than  as  a  poet.     The 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  'J^ 

single  volume  of  his  verse,  "Wild  Earth,"  was 
published  in  1907  and  contains  but  twenty-five 
poems.  In  his  work  and  in  that  of  Francis  Led- 
widge  are  sounded  the  two  most  distinctively 
original  notes  in  the  poetry  of  the  younger  genera- 
tion of  Irish  writers.  He  is  concerned  both  as 
poet  and  as  dramatist  with  elemental  emotions 
only;  the  subtle,  the  complex  and  the  intricate  in 
thought  and  in  feeling  do  not  enter  into  the  scope 
of  his  work.  Professor  Weygandt  ^  has  pointed 
out  that  his  chief  themes  are  three  in  number: 
love  of  land,  of  woman,  and  of  adventure.  In 
his  poems,  for  all  their  hardness  and  objectivity, 
for  all  their  revolt  against  the  bequeathed  con- 
vention that  involves  an  eternal  acceptance  of 
hardship,  of  squalor,  physical  and  spiritual,  of  de- 
spair, the  dominant  note  is  one  of  courage  to  as- 
sume the  adventure  of  life  and  of  joy  in  its  beauty. 
His  best  known  single  poem  is  "The  Plougher," 
which,  since  it  comprises  the  essence  of  his  reaction 
to  the  life  of  his  country,  may  well  be  quoted: — 

"Sunset  and  silence!    A  man:  around  him  earth  savage, 
earth  broken; 
Beside  him  two  horses — a  plough! 

^  "Irish  Plays  and  Playwrights,"  Houghton-Mifflin,  1913, 
pp.  199. 


78  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

"Earth  savage,  earth  broken,  the  dawn-man  there  in 
the  sunset, 
And  the  Plough  that  is  twin  to  the  Sword,  that  is 
founder  of  cities! 

**  Brute- tamer,  plough-maker,  earth  breaker! 
Can'st  hear?    There  are  ages  between  us. 
Is  it  praying  you  are  as  you  stand  there 
alone  in  the  sunset? 

"Surely  your  thoughts  are  of  Pan,  or  of  Wotan,  or 
of  Dana  ? 

"Yet  why  give  thought  to  the  gods?    Has  Pan  led  you 
brutes  where  they  stumble? 
Has  Dana  numbed  pain  of  the  child-bed,  or  Wotan 
put  hands  to  your  plough? 

"What  matter  your  foolish  reply!     O,  man,  standing 
lone  and  bowed  earthward, 
Your  task  is  a  day  near  its  close.     Give  thanks  to 
the  night-giving  God. 

"Slowly  the  darkness  falls,  the  broken  lands  blend 
with  the  savage; 
The   brute-tamer   stands    by    the   brutes,    a    head's 
breadth  only  above  them. 

"A  head's  breadth?    Ay,  but  therein  is  hell's  depth, 
and  the  height  up  to  heaven. 
And  the  thrones  of  the  gods  and  their  halls,  their 
chariots,  purples  and  splendours." 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  79 

Padraic  Colum  is  just  as  surely  the  poet  of  the 
future  as  Yeats  Is  the  poet  of  the  past,  and  Ste- 
phens the  poet  of  the  present  in  Ireland. 

Seumas  O'SullIvan,  Thomas  Keohler  and  George 
Roberts,  together  with  Charles  Weekes,  are  fol- 
lowers of  the  mystic  tradition.  O'Sullivan's 
earliest  volume,  "The  Twilight  People"  (1904), 
brought  him  forward  as  a  master  of  delicate  and 
faint  rhythms,  and  a  visionary  whose  poetry 
evoked  in  the  minds  of  those  to  whom  it  was 
attuned  memories  and  dreams  of  a  spiritual  life 
diiferent  from  that  of  this  world.  He  followed  it 
with  "Verses  Sacred  and  Profane"  (1908),  "The 
Earth  Lover"  (1909),  "Selected  Lyrics"  (1910). 
In  the  same  year  his  "Collected  Poems"  were 
published,  and  in  1914,  "An  Epilogue."  He  has 
unswervingly  preserved  the  fine  qualities  of  his 
earlier  work,  and,  although  he  has  concerned  him- 
self neither  with  the  past  nor  the  present  of  his 
country,  he  has  expressed  its  mystic  idealism  with 
exquisite  and  fragile  beauty. 

Thomas  Keohler  in  "Songs  of  a  Devotee" 
(1906),  and  George  Roberts  in  "White  Fire" 
(1908),  have  added  to  the  store  of  lyrics  expressive 
of  the  mystic  interpretation  of  life  of  which  the 
renascence  has  been  productive.     Charles  Weekes 


8o  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

in  "About  Women  "  (1907),  has  written  satirically 
and  quite  without  the  vein  of  mysticism  that  runs 
through  his  earlier  poetry.  Herbert  Trench,  be- 
fore deserting  the  Irish  movement  for  the  man- 
agement of  a  London  theater,  wrote  in  "Deirdre 
Wed  and  Nineteen  Other  Poems  "  (1901),  some 
very  beautiful  verse  dealing  principally  with  heroic 
legend.  Joseph  Campbell  in  known  as  an  artist, 
dramatist  and  poet.  His  volume  of  verse,  "A 
Mountainy  Singer"  (1909),  and  a  volume  of 
prose  impressions,  "Mearing  Stones"  (191 1),  are 
instinct  with  the  life  of  Donegal. 

The  "  Poems  and  Translations"  (1909),  of  John 
Millington  Synge  were,  for  the  most  part,  written 
between  1891  and  1908.  They  express  the  reac- 
tion against  the  tenuous  mysticism  and  complex 
imagery  of  Yeats  and  of  A.  E.  that  is  to  be  like- 
wise found  in  his  plays.  Their  chief  value  is  not 
that  of  pure  poetic  content,  but  that  of  personal 
expression;  they  reveal,  even  more  clearly  than 
his  plays,  the  temperament  and  the  attitude 
toward  life  of  their  author.  "The  strong  things 
of  life,"  he  wrote  in  the  preface,  "are  needed  in 
poetry  also,  to  show  that  what  is  exalted  or  tender 
is  not  made  by  feeble  blood.  It  may  almost  be 
said  that  before  verse  can  be  human  again  it  must 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  8 1 

learn  to  be  brutal."  In  his  revolt  against  the 
otherworldliness  of  Irish  poetry,  Synge  went  to 
the  other  extreme,  and  the  greater  part  of  his 
verse  is  violent  and  truculent  in  its  relation  to  life. 
He  wrote  sardonically  and  bitterly  of  his  own  life, 
and  with  Elizabethan  frankness  of  the  lives  of 
others,  but  of  nature  he  wrote  tenderly  and  with 
beauty  of  vision.  His  translations  are  almost 
unmatched  for  the  fidelity  of  their  feeling  to  that 
of  the  original.  But,  in  the  final  analysis,  his 
accomplishment  was  less  in  poetry  than  in  the 
drama,  and  it  can  be  discussed  to  greater  advan- 
tage in  its  relation  to  his  dramatic  writing. 

The  reaction  instituted  by  the  plays  of  Synge 
has  been  carried  further  in  the  poetry  of  Patrick 
MacGill  and  of  James  Stephens.  Patrick  Mac- 
Gill  has  written  of  his  early  experiences  in  two 
novels  of  stark  realism,  "Children  of  the  Dead 
End"  (1914),  and  "The  Rat  Pit"  (1915).  He 
came  of  an  impoverished  family  in  Donegal,  la- 
bored on  the  farms,  and  later  became  one  of  the 
many  casual  and  migratory  laborers  who  cross 
each  summer  from  Ireland  to  Scotland  to  help 
gather  in  the  crops.  Of  the  horrors  of  this  life 
the  uninitiated  may  read  in  his  novels.  "Songs 
of  the  Dead   End"   (1912),  reveal  both  beauty 


82  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

and  tragedy  and  are  instinct  with  a  philosophy 
that  is  a  product  of  experience  alone. 

James  Stephens  has  done  his  most  important 
work  as  a  novelist,  although  he  commenced  his 
literary  career  with  a  volume  of  verse,  "Insurrec- 
tions "  (1909),  and  followed  it  with  "The  Hill  of 
Vision"  (1912),  "Songs  From  the  Clay"  (1915) 
and  "The  Rocky  Road  to  Dublin  "  (1916).  His 
poetry  is,  for  the  most  part,  powerful  and 'grim 
with  the  facts  of  life,  from  which  he  seeks  no 
refuge  in  a  world  of  heroic  legend  or  ideality.  He 
is  not  insensible  to  beauty,  but  humanity,  as  A.  E. 
has  pointed  out  in  a  charming  essay,  is  Stephens' 
fundamental  concern.  He  is  in  full  rebellion 
against  the  school  that  upholds  art  as  an  alterna- 
tive to  life,  saturating  its  work  with  dream  and 
illusion.  He  is  a  satirist,  a  castigator  of  society, 
a  realist  of  indubitable  power. 
— Thomas  MacDonagh,  critic,  dramatist,  and 
leader  in  the  ill-fated  insurrection  of  April,  1916, 
was  the  author  of  three  volumes  of  verse: 
"Through  the  Ivory  Gate,"  "The  Golden  Joy," 
and  "Songs  of  Myself"  (1910).  In  his  poetry  he 
fused  a  highly  mystical  love  of  beauty  with  a  pas- 
sionate devotion  to  the  national  Ideal  and  the 
rich  destiny  which  he  conceived  as  the  future  of 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  83 

the  Irish  race.  He  expressed,  perhaps  uncon- 
sciously, a  prophecy  of  his  own  untimely  fate  in 
his  poetic  tragedy,  "When  the  Dawn  is  Come" 
(1908),  and  in  a  poem  revealing  his  vision  of  the 
poet  leading  Ireland  on  to  victory  in  her  fight  for 
national  freedom.  Like  A.  E.  and  Lionel  John- 
son, MacDonagh  identified  his  vision  of  mystic 
beauty  with  the  Ireland  of  his  dreams,  expressing 
in  its  finest  essence  the  spirit  of  nationality  that 
is  one  of  the  fundamental  ideals  of  the  Celtic 
Dawn. 

Seumas  MacManus,  author  of  "Ballads  of  a 
Country  Boy"  (1902),  is  better  known  as  a  re- 
teller  of  old  folk-tales.  His  "In  Chimney  Cor- 
ners" (1899),  "Through  the  Turf  Smoke"  (1899), 
and  "Donegal  Fairy  Stories"  (1900),  reveal  a 
spirit  as  racy  of  the  soil  and  the  life  that  he  knows 
and  loves  as  that  of  any  shanachie  among  the 
cabins  in  the  bleak  northwest  of  Ireland.  His 
love  of  Ireland  and  his  understanding  of  the  Irish 
mind,  and  the  beautiful  expression  that  he  has 
given  to  its  dreams  of  the  otherworld  are  reechoed 
in  the  work  of  another  poet  who,  like  MacManus, 
has  become  a  resident  of  the  United  States. 
Norreys  Jephson  O'Connor  has  written  in  "Be- 
side the  Blackwater"  (1914)  of  his  love  for  the 


84  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

grey  mist-laden  Irish  landscape,  and  in  his  play, 
"The  Lennan  Sidhe"  (1916)  of  the  faery  life  with 
which  that  landscape  is  instinct. 

The  latest  of  the  younger  choir  of  Irish  poets  to 
have  achieved  fame  is  Francis  Ledwidge.  His 
brief  biography  contains  all  the  essentials  of 
romance.  Born  in  Slane,  County  Meath,  he  has 
been  a  grocery  clerk,  a  miner,  a  farmer,  a  dabbler 
in  hypnotism,  and,  at  the  present  writing,  is  at 
the  front  in  the  Balkans.  Unlike  Colum  or 
Stephens  or  MacGill,  he  has  not  chosen  to  express 
anything  of  the  life  of  the  peasant.  His  verse, 
"Songs  of  the  Fields"  (1916),  is  concerned  only 
with  the  celebration  of  beauty  in  nature.  It  is 
neither  symbolic,  mystical,  nor  introspective;  it 
is  joyous,  exuberant,  beautifully  cadenced,  and 
betrays  an  intuitive  feeling  for  the  image-making 
value  of  words.  Poetic  vision  and  an  instinctive 
inevitability  of  phrasing  render  it  distinguished 
above  all  recent  Irish  poetry.  To  many,  espe- 
cially in  these  days  when  poetry  is  being  more 
often  wrought  from  the  horror  than  from  the 
beauty  of  life,  Ledwidge's  verse  will  have  the 
haunting  appeal  of  those  who,  like  Theocritus, 
sang  of  three  perfect  experiences  that  cannot  be 
banished  from  the  world:  youth,  love  and  nature. 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  85 

For  he  is  preeminently  the  idyllic  poet  of  our  day, 
the  singer  of  the  open,  wind-swept  fields,  the  lover 
of  nature  in  all  the  infinite  variety  of  her  beauty, 
in  all  her  abundant  store  of  color  and  music. 

"  I  love  the  wet-lipped  wind  that  stirs  the  hedge, 
And  kisses  the  bent  flowers  that  drooped  for  rain, 

That  stirs  the  poppy  on  the  sun-burned  ledge 
And  like  a  swan  dies  singing  without  pain. 

The  golden  bees  go  buzzing  down  to  stain 
The  lilies'  frills,  and  the  blue  harebell  rings, 

And  the  sweet  blackbird  in  the  rainbow  sings. 

"Deep  in  the  meadow  I  would  sing  a  song, 

The  shallow  brook  my  tuning  fork,  the  birds 

My  masters;  and  the  boughs  they  hop  along 

Shall  mark  my  time:  but  there  shall  be  no  words 

For  lurking  Echo's  mock;  an  angel  herds 
Words  that  I  may  not  know,  within,  or  you. 

Words  for  the  fabled  meet,  the  good  and  true." 

The  poetry  produced  by  the  Celtic  renascence 
has  followed  three  tendencies.  The  movement 
influenced  by  Yeats  seems,  at  this  distance  from 
its  inception,  a  belated  ofl"-shoot  of  Preraphaeli- 
tism.  Yeats  himself  has  turned  from  poetry  to 
the  drama,  has  published  a  definitive  edition  of 
his  works,  and  has  produced  little  during  the  past 
few  years.     In  his  later  work  he  has  dwelled  less 


86  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

often  in  the  land  of  the  imagination,  and  more 
frequently  dealt  with  reality.  The  movement 
toward  symbolism  was  standardized  and  bereft 
of  its  beauty,  and  has  died  away.  A.  E.  has  de- 
voted his  attention  to  social  reform,  and  the  agri- 
cultural movement  has  drawn  him  away  from 
poetry.  The  revolt  of  the  younger  poets  has  been 
in  the  direction  of  realism  on  the  one  hand,  and 
a  concern  with  nature  on  the  other.  And,  with 
the  rise  of  a  native  drama,  poetry  has  been  rele- 
gated to  a  secondary  place  in  the  attention  of 
Irish  writers.  Symbolism  and  mysticism,  the 
exploration  of  legend,  and  the  search  for  a  refuge 
from  the  facts  of  life  in  art  were  the  path  of  the 
elder  generation.  The  new  generation,  as  we 
shall  see  in  the  discussion  of  the  drama  and  the 
novel,  has  turned  the  conditions  and  relations  of 
every  day  life. 

One  theme,  however,  has  been  common  to  all 
the  poets  that  we  have  discussed  with  the  excep- 
tion of  William  Sharp.  All  of  them  have  been 
concerned  with  the  awakening  of  a  race-conscious- 
ness in  Ireland,  and  all  of  them  have  expressed 
an  abiding  devotion  to  the  aspiration  of  nationality 
and  to  the  spiritual  renascence  whereby  they 
have  hoped  to  encompass  it.     This  national  ideal, 


POETRY  OF  THE  RENASCENCE  87 

fundamental  in  the  thought  that  produced  the 
renascence  itself,  has  received  many  interpreta- 
tions and  many  varied  expressions.  With  Yeats 
and  A.  E.,  with  Lionel  Johnson  and  Thomas  Mac- 
Donagh,  it  has  been  identified  with  a  vision  of 
spiritual  life  and  spiritual  beauty,  and  it  has  taken 
the  visible  clothing  of  symbols  drawn  from  the 
heroic  legends  of  the  past.  In  the  work  of  those 
poets  who  have  revolted  from  what  they  felt  to  be 
a  tenuous  ideal  seeking  refuge  in  the  past,  it  has 
been  productive  of  a  criticism  of  modern  Irish 
life.  In  the  work  of  Synge  and  of  Stephens  this 
criticism  has  been  emphasized  by  trenchant 
satire;  in  the  work  of  Colum  and  Patrick  MacGill 
it  has  been  evidenced  in  a  deep  concern  with  the 
realities  of  existence.  But  the  critical  spirit  of 
the  new  generation  of  Irish  poets  has  been  directed 
toward  the  awakening  of  a  people  to  their  ideals 
and  to  the  destiny  that  is  theirs  if  they  will  but 
labor  at  the  reconstruction  of  their  life.  And  it 
has  been  inspired  by  the  one  hope  to  which  all 
the  writers  of  the  Celtic  Dawn  have  given  in- 
stinctive allegiance,  the  passionate  hope  of  na- 
tional independence. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    DRAMA 

IT  was  during  the  late  eighties  and  early  nine- 
ties of  the  last  century  that  a  revival  of  in- 
terest in  the  arts  of  the  theater  began  to  evidence 
itself  in  England.  Two  of  the  contributing  forces 
that  operated  in  creating  a  more  serious  attitude 
toward  the  drama  were  the  translations  of  the 
plays  of  Ibsen,  and  the  foundation  of  the  Inde- 
pendent Theater.  The  plays  of  Ibsen,  and  later 
those  of  other  continental  dramatists,  set  literary 
men  to  thinking  of  the  drama  as  an  essentially 
social  force  embodying  a  philosophic  reaction  to 
life  in  terms  of  social  criticism,  and  as  such  an 
almost  wholly  new  literary  form  in  which  to  ex- 
press themselves.  They  felt  that  the  theater 
offered  them  a  wider  audience  than  they  could 
ever  hope  to  reach  with  the  printed  page,  and 
therefore  that  the  drama  was  the  most  demo- 
cratic of  the  arts  and  the  most  direct  in  its  appeal. 
They  began  to  discuss  the  function  of  the  theater, 

and  to  hope  for  a  drama  which,  besides  revealing 

88 


THE  DRAMA  89 

a  serious  reading  of  life,  would  be  graced,  like 
that  of  Ibsen,  by  literary  distinction.  Their 
activities  took  tangible  form  in  the  foundation  of 
the  Independent  Theater,  an  association  formed 
with  the  purpose  of  producing  plays  that  would 
not  have  obtained  a  hearing  in  the  "commercial" 
theater.  In  their  anxiety  to  approach  life  directly 
and  reflect  it  accurately,  the  new  playwrights 
wrote  very  realistic  plays,  making  their  appeal 
rather  to  the  intellect  than  to  the  emotions  of  the 
audience.  In  the  meanwhile  the  technique  of 
production  succumbed  to  a  similar  wave  of  real- 
ism; it  was  found  consistent  with  the  naturalism 
of  the  plays  themselves  to  exactly  reproduce  the 
environment  of  life,  and  the  minute  and  detailed 
naturalism  of  production  against  which  there  is 
so  strong  a  revolt  today  was  ubiquitous,  both  in 
the  "commercial"  and  in  the  "intellectual" 
theater. 

Naturalism  in  content  and  in  production  be- 
came the  prevailing  mode  of  the  day  in  the  theater, 
and  almost  immediately  there  came  a  reaction 
in  the  direction  of  symbolism,  the  best  known 
exponent  of  which  was  Maurice  Maeterlinck. 
Symbolism  attached  itself  to  the  poetic  drama, 
and  the  "  modern  movement "  in  the  drama  di- 


90  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

vided  into  two  factions,  one  of  which  adhered 
to  the  tradition  of  naturalism  and  the  play  of  in- 
tellect, inherited  from  Ibsen,  and  the  other  giving 
its  allegiance  to  the  poetic  play.  To  this  confusion 
as  to  the  aims  of  the  theater  and  the  theory  of  the 
drama  as  an  art,  the  Irish  dramatic  movement, 
as  we  shall  presently  see,  owed  its  inception. 
First,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  briefly  review  a 
little  of  its  early  history.* 

The  primary  impulse  toward  the  establishment 
of  a  theater  of  art  in  Dublin  came  from  William 
Butler  Yeats.  In  1885  he  had  composed  "The 
Island  of  Statues,"  a  pastoral  dramatic  poem,  and 
in  the  following  year  "Mosada,"  a  poetic  tragedy 
of  the  Spanish  Inquisition;  both  of  which,  although 
published  in  the  earlier  editions  of  his  verse,  have 
been  rejected  and  do  not  appear  in  the  ** Collected 
Works"    (1908).     Between    1892    and    1899    he 

*Two  entertaining  accounts  are  given  in  George  Moore's 
"Ave,"  Heinemann,  191 1,  and  Lady  Gregory's  "Our  Irish 
Theatre,"  Putnam,  1913.  See  also  W.  B.  Yeats,  "The  Irish 
Dramatic  Movement,"  Vol.  IV,  Collected  Works,  "Ideas 
of  Good  and  Evil,"  "The  Work  of  the  Abbey  Theatre"  in 
Plays,  Macmillan.  Weygandt's  "Irish  Plays  and  Play- 
wrights," Houghton-Mifflin,  is  a  survey  of  the  Irish  theater 
until  1913.  See  also  "Samhain,"  and  its  predecessors  "Bel- 
taine"  and  "The  Arrow,"  a  yearly  review  published  by  The 
Abbey  and  edited  by  W.  B.  Yeats. 


THE  DRAMA  91 

wrote  "The  Land  of  Heart's  Desire,"  "The 
Countess  Cathleen,"  and  a  version  of  "The 
Shadowy  Waters,"  his  favorite  and  most  consid- 
ered work,  which  was  published  in  1900.  Only 
"The  Land  of  Heart's  Desire"  reached  produc- 
tion, having  been  given  at  the  Avenue  Theater  in 
London  in  1894.  In  1899  Edward  Martyn  wrote 
two  plays,  "The  Heather  Field"  and  "Maeve," 
which  he  found  it  impossible  to  have  produced 
in  London,  and  which  he  thought  of  offering  to 
German  managers  for  translation  and  production. 
It  was  finally  arranged,  with  the  help  of  Lady 
Gregory  and  of  George  Moore,  to  produce  two 
plays  in  Dublin.  An  English  company  was  gath- 
ered and  rehearsed  in  London,  and  on  May  8th 
and  9th,  1899,  Yeats's  "The  Countess  Cathleen" 
and  Martyn's  "The  Heather  Field"  were  given 
in  the  Antient  Concert  Rooms  in  Dublin.  These 
productions  were  made  under  the  auspices  of  The 
Irish  Literary  Theater,  founded  by  Yeats,  Martyn 
and  Lady  Gregory  with  the  hope  of  "building  up 
a  Celtic  and  Irish  school  of  dramatic  literature." 
The  society  planned  for  an  experimental  Spring 
season  in  Dublin  each  year  for  three  years.  The 
second  season,  at  the  Gaiety  Theater,  brought 
forward  Alice  Milligan's  "The  Last  Feast  of  the 


92  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

Fianna,"  "The  Bending  of  the  Bough,"  which 
George  Moore  had  adapted  from  Martyn's  "The 
Tale  of  a  Town,"  and  Martyn's  "Maeve."  F.  R. 
Benson  assumed  the  burdens  of  the  third  series  of 
productions,  which  consisted  of  "Diarmuid  and 
Grania,"  an  heroic  play  in  prose  by  Yeats  and 
Moore  in  collaboration,  and  "  Casad-an-Sugan " 
(The  Twisting  of  the  Rope)  a  one  act  play  in 
Gaelic  by  Dr.  Douglas  Hyde  founded  upon  an 
episode  in  Yeats's  "Stories  of  Red  Hanrahan," 
the  first  play  in  Gaelic  to  be  produced  upon  any 
stage.  The  three  experimental  years  originally 
planned  for  having  come  to  an  end,  William  G. 
Fay  and  his  brother,  Frank  J.  Fay,  associated 
themselves  with  Yeats  and  Lady  Gregory  and 
assumed  the  direction  of  a  company  of  amateur 
actors  who,  as  the  Irish  National  Dramatic  Com- 
pany, gave  performances  in  St.  Teresa's  Hall  and 
in  the  Antient  Concert  Rooms  during  1902.  Their 
name  was  changed  in  the  following  year  to  The 
Irish  National  Theater  Society  which,  in  1903  and 
1904,  gave  performances  in  Molesworth  Hall. 
In  1903  the  company  also  .gave  two  performances 
in  London,  which  brought  them  to  the  attention 
of  Miss  A.  E.  F.  Horniman,  who  purchased  the 
Abbey  Theater  in  Dublin,  reconstructed  it,  and 


THE  DRAMA  93 

endowed  the  company  for  a  period  of  six  years. 
This  service  is  but  one  of  many  benefactions  that 
the  modern  English  stage  owes  to  Miss  Horniman 
who,  by  her  management  of  the  Gaiety  Theater 
in  Manchester,  has  developed  and  encouraged  all 
the  arts  of  the  theater  in  England.  The  Abbey 
Theater  was  opened  on  December  27th,  1904, 
with  the  first  performance  of  Yeats's  "On  Baile's 
Strand."  In  1905  the  name  of  the  company  was 
changed  to  The  National  Theater  Society,  Ltd., 
which  is  the  official  title  of  the  Abbey  players. 

The  patent  granted  to  the  Abbey  provides  for 
the  production  of  plays  either  written  by  Irish- 
men, or  upon  Irish  subjects,  or  foreign  master- 
pieces provided  that  they  are  not  English.  The 
restrictions  thus  set  upon  the  company's  activity 
have  never  interfered  with  the  work  of  the  Abbey, 
although  the  government  has  in  several  instances 
unsuccessfully  threatened  it,  in  an  attempt  to 
prevent  the  production  of  plays  that  were  held  to 
be  morally  or  politically  objectionable.  The 
original  group  of  players  formed  by  the  brothers 
Fay  were  recruited  chiefly  from  the  artisans  of 
Dublin,  and  were  unpaid,  donating  their  services 
from  a  purely  artistic  motive.  After  the  subsidy 
assured  by  Miss  Horniman  had  been  secured,  pay- 


V 


^  94^  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

merits  were  made  to  all  members  of  the  company, 
in  order  that  they  might  devote  their  entire  time 
to  the  work  of  the  Abbey.  Miss  Horniman  her- 
self withdrew  from  the  Abbey  in  1910. 

The  Irish  dramatic  movement  owed  its  incep- 
tion, as  we  have  said,  to  a  reaction  against  the 
naturalism  of  the  commercial  theater.  Yeats 
pointed  out  that  in  the  modern  play  passion  be- 
comes sentimental,  and  that  if  the  playwright 
who  deals  with  contemporary  life  is  to  be  success- 
ful in  the  commercial  theater  he  must  deal  only 
with  the  surface  of  life.  He  saw  that  the  French 
playwrights  had  invented  the  play  with  a  thesis 
in  order  to  project  a  serious  criticism  of  life  in  the 
drama,  knowing  that  argument  is  almost  the  only 
expression  of  passion  in  our  daily  life.  He  did 
not  believe,  however,  that  art  is  concerned  with 
the  expression  of  opinions  that  can  be  defended 
by  argument;  what  he  desired  was  the  upbuilding 
of  a  school  of  Irish  dramatists  whose  work  would 
contain  either  a  vision  or  a  criticism  of  life  clothed 
in  beautiful  language.  He  hoped  that  the  race 
consciousness  of  the  Irish  people  would  become 
articulate  in  the  work  of  a  theater  of  art,  and  that 
it  would  be  the  center  of  an  intellectual  and  emo- 
tional tradition. 


THE  DRAMA  95 

Since  1900,  the  date  of  publication  of  "The 
Shadowy  Waters,"  the  theater  has  occupied  almost 
the  entire  time  and  attention  of  William  Butler 
Yeats.  His  output  of  verse  during  the  past  six- 
teen years  has  been  limited  to  two  slim  book- 
lets, "In  the  Seven  Woods"  (1902),  and  the 
more  recent  "Responsibilities"  (1915).  In  all  he 
has  written  fifteen  plays;  the  two  of  his  youth 
have  never  been  republished,  and  three  others 
have  been  discarded.  These  are  "Diarmuid  and 
Grania,"  written  in  collaboration  with  George 
Moore,  "The  Pot  of  Broth,"  and  "Where There  Is 
Nothing."  "The  Hour  Glass,"  a  morality  in 
prose  first  published  in  1902,  has  been  rewritten 
both  as  to  text  and  idea  and,  although  not  in- 
cluded in  the  "Collected  Works,"  has  since  been 
published  in  its  amended  version  in  "Responsi- 
bilities." His  interest  in  the  theater  has  also 
been  productive  of  much  critical  writing,  for  the 
most  part  originally  published  in  the  occasional  re- 
view issued  by  the  Abbey  of  which  he  has  been  the 
editor, " Samhain " and  its  predecessors," Bel taine" 
and  "The  Arrow."  In  the  main,  we  are  justified  in 
saying  that  at  the  age  of  thirty-five  William  Butler 
Yeats  closed  his  career  as  a  lyric  poet  and  turned  his 
attention  exclusively  toward  writing  for  the  stage. 


96  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

The  qualities  predominating  in  his  lyric  verse 
are  those  most  evident  in  the  first  three  plays  that 
he  wrote  for  the  theater:  ''The  Countess  Cath- 
leen"  (1892-99),  "The  Land  of  Heart's  Desire" 
(1894),  ^^^  "The  Shadowy  Waters"  (1900). 
Their  beauty  is  that  of  atmosphere,  of  language, 
of  poetry  symbolical  of  a  spiritual  life  transcend- 
ing the  common  actions  of  daily  experience.  If 
we  remember  that  Yeats's  object  was  to  rid  the 
drama  of  what  may  be  termed  its  theatricality, 
to  express  in  art  the  core  and  the  spiritual  essence 
of  life,  the  fact  will  serve  to  explain  the  apparent 
absence  of  drama  from  the  first  versions  of  these 
plays.  Like  Maeterlinck,  to  whom  in  great  part 
he  owes  the  development  of  his  early  dramatic 
technique,  Yeats  oriented  his  material,  stripped  it 
of  all  temporal  allusion,  and  reduced  it  to  the  sym- 
bolical expression  of  the  great  aspirations  and  high 
emotions  that  are  constant  in  a  life  of  changing 
relations. 

His  dramatic  method  is  founded  upon  certain 
conceptions  the  most  important  of  which  are  his 
theories  of  comedy  and  tragedy,  his  theory  of  the 
speaking  of  dramatic  verse,  and  that  of  stage 
decoration.  "Tragic  art,  passionate  art,"  he  has 
written,  "the  drowner  of  dykes,  the  confounder 


THE  DRAMA  97 

of  understanding,  moves  us  by  setting  us  to  rev- 
erie, by  alluring  us  almost  to  the  intensity  of 
trance."  The  art  of  tragedy  takes  no  account  of 
the  individual  distinction  between  man  and  man; 
all  that  we  mean  by  the  term  character  is  absent 
from  it,  for  its  concern  is  with  the  universal  and 
the  enduring  in  emotion,  and  it  moves  us  by  what 
it  brings  us  of  our  ideals,  our  visions  and  our 
dreams.  Comedy,  on  the  other  hand,  has  its 
foundation  in  what  Ben  Jonson,  and  Congreve, 
whom  Yeats  quotes,  defined  as  humor;  the  pre- 
dominating characteristic  in  the  individual  tem- 
perament by  which  its  possessor  is  distinguished 
from  all  other  men.  The  tragedy  and  the  drama 
of  poetry  take  us  beyond  ourselves  and  our  daily 
life,  lifting  us  into  an  abstract  world  of  ideal  per- 
fection, while  our  pleasure  in  comedy  is  dependent 
upon  a  subtle  discrimination  in  the  values  of  our 
daily  life,  the  real  world,  finding  its  expression  in 
character. 

This  distinction  between  the  mood  of  comedy 
and  that  of  tragedy  in  the  play  itself  brought 
Yeats  to  a  realization  of  the  necessity  of  its  indi- 
cation in  the  physical  setting  of  the  play.  In 
writing  of  the  poetic  play  he  has  said:  "If  the  real 
world  is  not  altogether  rejected  it  is  but  touched 


98  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

here  and  there,  and  into  the  places  we  have  left 
empty  we  summon  rhythm,  balance,  pattern, 
images  that  remind  us  of  vast  passions,  the  vague- 
ness of  past  times,  all  the  chimeras  that  haunt  the 
edge  of  trance."  To  create  an  atmosphere  which 
would  convey  the  quality  of  this  illusive  mood  by 
employing  the  methods  of  decoration  common  to 
the  naturalistic  drama  was  manifestly  impossible. 
He  required  a  new  art  of  decoration  in  which  the 
subtle  play  of  light  upon  a  conventionalized  back- 
ground should  contribute  atmosphere  and  em- 
phasis to  the  mood  of  the  spoken  line  through 
allusion  and  suggestion  rather  than  through  a 
photographically  natural  reproduction  of  concrete 
reality.  To  secure  this  qualitative  correspondence 
between  the  dramatic  poem  and  its  physical  back- 
ground, Yeats  summoned  to  his  aid  Gordon  Craig, 
with  whom  he  had  many  ideas  in  common,  and 
who  has  since  been  recognized  as  the  father  of  the 
modern  movement  in  scenic  decoration.  To- 
gether they  developed  a  scheme  in  which  the 
decoration,  although  suggestive  and  evocative  of 
the  mood  of  the  drama,  was  completely  subor- 
dinated to  the  action  and  the  spoken  line,  func- 
tioning only  as  a  background  to  them,  and  thus 
never  distracting  the  audience  from  concentra- 


THE  DRAMA  99 

tion  upon  the  play  itself.  A  few  of  the  designs 
that  Gordon  Craig  produced  for  the  Abbey  have 
been  published  in  the  beautiful  volume  of  "Plays 
for  an  Irish  Theater"  issued  by  Mr.  Bullen  at  the 
Shakespeare  Head  Press  at  Stratford-upon-Avon 
in  191 1,  and  among  them  is  the  finely  conceived 
set  employed  in  the  production  of  "The  Hour 
Glass."  The  designs  for  the  greater  number  of 
Yeats's  plays  have,  however,  been  the  work  of 
Robert  Gregory,  Lady  Gregory's  son,  a  subscriber 
to  the  theories  of  Yeats  and  Craig,  and  the  com- 
position of  these  sets  has  often  been  directly  sug- 
gested by  Yeats  himself. 

In  establishing  the  hierarchy  of  the  arts  of  the 
theater  for  the  Abbey,  Yeats  has  placed  the  art 
of  the  playwright  preeminent,  the  art  of  the  actor 
second,  and  subordinate  to  both  of  these,  the  art 
of  the  producer.  Comment  upon  the  acting  of 
the  Abbey  company  is  reserved  for  a  later  page, 
but  of  one  of  the  influences  upon  Yeats's  dramatic 
theory  directly  related  to  the  art  of  acting  some 
account  must  be  taken.  On  a  previous  page  it 
has  been  remarked  that  in  1902  Yeats  resolved 
to  write  all  his  long  poems  for  the  stage,  and  all 
his  short  ones  to  be  spoken  to  the  psaltery.  Just 
how  he  came  to  this  decision  he  has  revealed  in  a 


lOO  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

little  essay  upon  "Speaking  to  the  Psaltery"  in 
"  Ideas  of  Good  and  Evil."  Both  A.  E.  and  Yeats 
had  noticed  that  in  composing  their  poems  they 
had  in  mind  certain  definite  notes  which  could  be 
written  down  and  played  on  the  organ,  as  they 
discovered  when  they  consulted  Edward  Martyn, 
or,  in  the  case  of  Yeats's  poems,  "turned  into 
something  like  a  Gregorian  hymn  if  one  sang  them 
in  the  ordinary  way."  Yeats  then  went  to  Arnold 
Dolmetsch,  who  made  him  an  instrument  akin 
to  both  the  psaltery  and  the  lyre,  to  the  accom- 
paniment of  which  Miss  Florence  Farr  recited 
Yeats's  verses,  regulating  her  speech  by  the  ordi- 
nary musical  notation.  This  new  method  of 
elocution  proved  rich  in  rhythm  and  cadence, 
delicate  in  modulation  and  susceptible  of  an  in- 
finite nuance  of  expression.  It  was  taught  by 
Miss  Farr  to  the  Abbey  company,  and  in  accord- 
ance with  it  were  recited  all  the  songs  and  many 
of  the  lyric  passages  in  Yeats's  plays.  In  its 
effect  it  greatly  resembles  the  beautiful  art  lately 
revealed  to  us  in  America  by  Madame  Ratan 
Devi  in  her  recitals  of  Hindu  poetry.  It  has  had 
a  telling  effect  upon  the  diction  of  the  Abbey 
players  in  their  production  of  poetic  drama;  their 
speaking  of  verse  is  so  fluent  and  liquid,  so  veri- 


THE  DRAMA  loi 

tably  dramatic,  that  It  makes  much  of  the  recita- 
tion of  even  great  actors  seem  paltry  and  theat- 
rical. 

"The  Countess  Cathleen,"  "The  Land  of 
Heart's  Desire"  and  "The  Shadowy  Waters" 
were  followed  by  three  plays  in  prose.  "Diarmuid 
and  Grania"  (1901)  was  written,  as  we  said,  in 
collaboration  with  George  Moore.  It  is  probable 
that  the  greater  part  of  this  play  was  the  work  of 
Moore;  the  only  part  of  it  to  reach  publication  is 
a  bit  of  the  second  act,  written  in  French,  and  pub- 
lished in  "Ave"  (191 1).  The  original  plan  by 
which  it  was  hoped  to  bring  the  play  to  maturity 
has  been  amusingly  described  by  Moore  in  "Ave." 
He,  it  seems,  was  to  write  the  play  in  French, 
which  was  to  be  rendered  into  English  by  Lady 
Gregory.  Taidgh  O'Donoghue  was  to  translate 
this  version  into  Irish,  which  was  to  be  retrans- 
lated into  English  by  Lady  Gregory,  and  upon 
this  final  version  Yeats  was  to  "put  style."  This 
process,  which  Moore  termed  literary  lunacy, 
terminated  in  a  failure.  But  it  served  to  illus- 
trate the  function  of  the  literary  theater.  The 
heroic  legend  was  conceived  in  terms  of  folk- 
character,  and  the  play  itself  was  essentially  a 
literary  play.     Neither  of  the  collaborators  was 


I02  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

willing  to  give  the  play  to  the  other  for  revision, 
and  since  George  Moore's  final  desertion  of  the 
Irish  movement,  and  the  publication  in  191 2  of 
Lady  Gregory's  "Grania,"  it  has  seemed  more 
than  ever  unlikely  that  the  play  will  ever  again 
reach  the  public. 

"Cathleen  ni  Houlihan"  (1902)  is  perhaps  the 
best  prose  play  that  Yeats  has  written,  and  be- 
cause of  the  patriotism  of  its  allegory  has  proven 
the  most  popular  of  his  works  in  Ireland.  The 
legend  of  the  fate-ridden  old  woman  for  whom 
men  die  and  who,  having  lost  her  "four  beautiful 
green  fields,"  never  despairs  nor  grows  truly 
old,  furnished  him  one  of  the  most  poetic  themes 
in  all  the  range  of  his  work.  There  is  to  be  found 
in  this  play  a  dialogue  that  is  veritably  dramatic; 
the  greatest  economy  of  means  and  of  language 
has  been  sought  for  by  the  author,  and  the  result 
is  a  finely  wrought  little  masterpiece  of  drama. 
The  character  of  Cathleen  was  probably  suggested 
to  Yeats  by  that  of  the  old  peasant  woman.  Peg 
Inerny,  whose  dual  existence  as  a  peasant  by  day 
and  a  queen  of  the  Sidhe  by  night  is  chronicled  in 
Edward  Martyn's  "Maeve."  "The  Pot  of 
Broth"  (1902),  which  followed  "Cathleen,"  is  a 
one  act  farce  in  the  vein  of  Lady  Gregory's  writ- 


THE  DRAMA  103 

ing,  written  in  collaboration  with  Lady  Gregory, 
and  composed  chiefly  to  demonstrate  that  Yeats' s 
powers  were  not  restricted  to  serious  plays.  It 
has  been  given  with  some  success  by  W.  G.  Fay 
in  the  United  Kingdom  and  in  America. 

"Where  There  Is  Nothing"  (1903)  was  prob- 
ably influenced  by  Synge's  "The  Tinker's  Wed- 
ding" which,  although  never  produced  by  the 
Abbey  company,  had  been  written  during  the 
preceding  year.  Yeats's  play  deals  with  a  gentle- 
man and  a  scholar  who  joins  a  band  of  tinkers, 
revolting  against  what  its  author  has  called  "the 
despotism  of  fact,"  and  who  dies  an  outcast  from 
society  in  a  vision  of  truth.  As  produced  by  the 
Stage  Society  in  London  in  1904  it  scored  no  great 
success  and  failed  to  please  Yeats,  who  relin- 
quished the  theme  to  Lady  Gregory.  She  rewrote 
it  as  "The  Unicorn  from  the  Stars"  in  1907, 
changing  the  character  of  the  hero  from  an  aris- 
tocrat to  a  coach-builder,  and  relieving  the  im- 
probability of  his  death  by  also  causing  him  to  be 
an  epileptic.  In  its  original  form  the  play  comes 
very  close  to  being  autobiographical  statement, 
and  one  can  easily  believe  that  the  character  of 
Paul  Ruttledge  figures  forth  one  phase  at  least  of 
Yeats's  mind.     In  it  one  finds  that  revolt  of  the 


104  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

artist  against  a  materialistic  civilization,  that  firm 
belief  in  the  truth  of  vision  which  is  present  in  his 
early  lyric  verse,  in  "The  Shadowy  Waters,"  and, 
in  a  somewhat  modified  form,  in  "The  King's 
Threshold."  "The  Hour  Glass,"  a  morality  play 
of  the  same  year,  is  concerned  with  a  Wise  Man 
who  has  destroyed  Heaven  and  Purgatory  with 
his  knowledge,  and  with  them  the  belief  of  the 
people  in  God.  He  is  intimidated  by  an  Angel 
and  is  taught  belief  by  a  Fool,  who  in  so  doing 
saves  the  Wise  Man's  soul.  Recently,  in  "Re- 
sponsibilities" (191 5),  the  play  has  been  re- 
written, and  the  Wise  Man  is  no  longer  taught 
truth  by  the  Fool,  but  rather  by  the  logic  of  cir- 
cumstance. The  influence  to  which  the  composi- 
tion of  "The  Hour  Glass"  is  usually  attributed  is 
"Everyman,"  which  had  been  produced  in  London 
during  the  previous  year.  In  theme  it  echoes 
the  conflict  between  rationalism  and  intuition 
with  which  Yeats  has  been  so  greatly  preoccupied. 
It  illustrates  the  opposition  of  the  world  of  experi- 
ence which  can  be  demonstrated  by  fact,  and  the 
world  of  belief  that  is  revealed  in  vision;  a  polar- 
ity that  is  characteristic  in  one  form  or  another  of 
all  of  his  writing. 

The  prose  plays  make  evident,  to  a  very  large 


THE  DRAMA  105 

degree,  Yeats's  acknowledged  collaboration  with 
Lady  Gregory,  who,  as  he  writes,  taught  him 
"the  true  countenance  of  country  life."  The  in- 
stinctive expression  of  himself,  however,  is  in  the 
poetic  tragedies.  "On  Baile's  Strand"  (1903), 
is  a  beautiful  setting  of  the  tale,  retold  by  Lady 
Gregory  in  "Cuchulain  of  Muirthemne"  (1902), 
of  the  slaying  by  Cuchulain  of  the  son  of  Aoife 
whom  he  does  not  know  to  be  his  own.  This 
tragic  legend,  common  to  the  folk-lore  of  all  peo- 
ple, is  set,  in  Yeats's  version,  in  high  relief  against 
the  ironic  characters  of  the  Blind  Man  and  the 
Fool,  who  could,  if  they  would,  prevent  the 
tragedy,  but  do  not,  for  the  clash  of  arms  gives 
them  the  opportunity  to  rob  the  houses  of  the 
people.  The  author  himself  has  criticized  this 
play  on  the  score  of  its  complexity  of  plot;  it  was 
to  have  been  one  of  a  cycle  of  plays  devoted  to 
Cuchulain,  but  the  others,  with  the  exception  of 
"The  Golden  Helmet"  (1910),  have  never  been 
written.  It  has  true  dramatic  value,  is  ennobled 
by  distinguished,  if  not  great,  poetry,  and  the 
manner  of  its  setting  forth  is  more  direct  and  less 
complex  than  that  of  the  earlier  poetic  plays.  It 
was  followed,  in  1904,  by  "The  King's  Threshold," 
which  many  take,  with  "The  Shadowy  Waters," 


I06  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

as  containing  both  a  purely  personal  expression 
of  Yeats's  philosophy  and  his  defence  of  his  art. 
The  play  deals  with  the  old  belief  that  a  scorned 
poet  may  defeat  a  king.  Yeats  chose  for  his  plot 
the  middle  Irish  legend  of  the  poet,  Seanchan, 
who,  having  been  deprived  of  his  seat  at  the  king's 
high  table,  stands  at  the  king's  threshold  to  starve 
to  death.  For  there  was  a  belief  that  a  dishonored 
poet,  should  he  starve  on  the  threshold  of  those 
who  have  insulted  him,  even  though  it  be  a  king, 
would  bring  a  curse  on  the  house.  Finally 
Seanchan  triumphs,  and  the  king  offers  him  the 
crown : 

"Kneel  down,  kneel  down;  he  has  the  greater  power. 
There  is  no  power  but  has  its  roots  in  his — 
I  understand  it  now.    There  is  no  power 
But  his  that  can  withhold  the  crown  or  give  it, 
Or  make  it  reverent  in  the  eyes  of  men, 
And  therefore  I  have  laid  it  in  his  hands, 
And  I  will  do  his  will." 

To  which  Seanchan  replies: — 

"O  crown!    O  crown! 
It  is  but  right  the  hands  that  made  the  crown 
In  the  old  time  should  give  it  where  they  please. 
O  silver  trumpets!    Be  you  lifted  up, 


THE  DRAMA  107 

And  cry  to  the  great  race  that  is  to  come. 
Long-throated  swans,  amid  the  waves  of  Time, 
Sing  loudly,  for  beyond  the  wall  of  the  world 
It  waits,  and  it  may  hear  and  come  to  us!" 

The  final  speech  of  Seanchan,  it  is  interesting  to 
note,  is  the  first  indication  in  Yeats's  published 
work  that  a  change  has  come  over  his  art  and  that 
it  no  longer  seeks  refuge  in  dreaming  over  the  past, 
but  confidently  looks  "to  the  great  race  that  Is  to 
come."  The  play  is  written  out  of  as  definite  an 
experience  as  is  any  of  Yeats's  published  work. 
At  the  time  of  its  composition  the  newspapers 
had  called  into  question  the  honesty  of  his  motives 
in  producing  Synge's  "In  the  Shadow  of  the  Glen" 
at  the  Abbey,  and  his  fellow  Nationalists  were 
asserting  that  Yeats  cared  more  for  his  art  than 
he  did  for  the  Irish  people.  Criticism  and  obloquy 
poured  in  on  him  from  a  public  exercised  by 
journalistic  agitation  against  Synge  and  the 
Abbey,  and  from  politicians  and  students  who  re- 
sented his  growing  concern  with  art.  His  answer 
to  the  critics  of  both  quarters  is  contained  in 
"The  King's  Threshold."  Conceived  less  truly 
in  terms  of  drama  than  "On  Baile's  Strand,"  it 
is  perhaps  the  most  eloquently  beautiful  state- 
ment of  the  power  of  poetry  and  the  value  to 


I08  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

society  of  the  poet  that  has  been  made  in  our 
day. 

Yeats's  chief  contribution  to  the  modern  poetic 
drama  is  "Deirdre"  (1906),  a  play  of  haunting 
loveliness  and  of  truly  great  poetry.  This  most 
poignant  of  the  "Three  Sorrows  of  Story  Telling" 
is  also  the  most  famous  and  the  most  beautiful 
of  Celtic  folk-tales,  and  few  Irish  writers  from  Sir 
Samuel  Ferguson  on  have  not  made  it  the  subject 
of  either  poem  or  play.  In  our  own  day  plays 
about  Deirdre,  whose  legend  is  only  less  known 
than  that  of  Iseult,  have  been  written  by  A.  E., 
Synge,  Eva  Gore-Booth,  and  Father  Thomas 
O'Kelly.  Yeats  has  adapted  the  legend  to  his 
own  purposes,  and  concentrated  as  a  focal  point 
upon  the  meeting  of  Conchubar,  Naisi  and  Deirdre 
in  the  guest  house  on  the  return  of  the  lovers  to 
Ireland.  In  thus  compressing  the  tragedy  within 
the  limits  of  a  single  episode,  he  has  immeasurably 
increased  the  dramatic  power  of  the  legend.  A 
bold  and  effective  stroke  of  dramatic  technique 
is  the  psychological  parallelism  with  which  Yeats 
has  invested  his  play.  The  action  takes  place  in 
an  old  guest  house  in  a  wood,  the  very  house  in 
which  Lughaidh  Redstripe  and  his  wife,  who 
during  half  of  the  year  had  the  body  of  a  sea- 


THE  DRAMA  109 

mew,  played  at  chess  while  they  awaited  death. 
Their  story,  like  that  of  Deirdre  and  Naisi,  is 
one  of  "treachery,  a  broken  promise  and  a  jour- 
ney's end,"  the  chess-board  upon  which  they 
played  is  still  in  the  house,  and  this  lends  to  the 
actions  of  Deirdre,  who  suspects  treachery  on  the 
part  of  Conchubar,  an  austere  terror.  The 
parallelism  is  both  internal  and  external;  it  has  a 
deliberate  effect  upon  Deirdre,  Naisi  and  Fergus, 
and  it  affords  the  audience  both  an  ironic  fore- 
boding of  the  final  tragedy  and  a  sharp  contrast 
between  the  cold  woman  of  the  sea,  and  the  pas- 
sionate, sensuous  and  untamed  Deirdre.  With 
the  introduction  of  the  chorus,  approximated  in 
the  characters  of  the  Fool  and  the  Blind  Man 
in  "On  Baile's  Strand,"  but  consummated  in 
"Deirdre"  by  the  three  women  musicians,  the 
poet  achieved  the  difficult  task  of  writing  a  trag- 
edy in  which  the  Greek  and  the  modern  spirit 
have  been  successfully  blended.  It  is  the  only 
play  by  Yeats  that  has  had  conspicuous  success 
in  any  theater  other  than  the  Abbey  when  not 
given  by  the  Abbey  players;  the  part  was  re- 
written for  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell,  who  added 
it  to  her  repertoire  and  played  it  in  London  and 
Dublin  with  the  Abbey  company  in  1907-8,  and 


no  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

also  with  a  company  of  her  own.  "Deirdre"  is 
the  most  effective  of  his  plays  in  the  theater  be- 
cause, of  all  his  plays,  it  is  written  with  the  surest 
eye  to  conventional  dramatic  construction  and 
to  the  resources  of  the  theater  itself;  its  dramatic 
appeal  is,  however,  as  greatly  due  to  the  beautiful 
content  of  the  story  as  to  excellences  of  construc- 
tion and  craftsmanship.  And  in  clothing  the 
content  of  his  play  with  a  potent  and  wistfully 
beautiful  lyricism,  Yeats  has  justified  his  theory 
of  the  theater. 

The  note  of  "Deirdre"  is  that  of  two  earlier 
plays,  "The  Land  of  Heart's  Desire"  and  "The 
Shadowy  Waters."  It  embodies  Yeats's  most 
characteristic  theme  as  a  poet-dramatist;  that  of 
the  right  of  men  and  women  to  life.  In  the  earlier 
plays  the  life  sought  is  one  of  the  spirit,  a  refuge 
in  dream  from  the  daily  round  of  existence.  In 
"Deirdre,"  however,  it  is  actual  experience  as  we 
know  it,  that  is  desired;  although  the  terms  in 
which  it  is  set  transcend  the  common  life,  they 
are  but  its  quintessence.  The  two  plays  that  he 
has  written  since  "Deirdre"  have  contributed 
nothing  to  his  art;  "The  Golden  Helmet"  (1910), 
a  legendary  farce  written  in  heroic  couplets,  is 
but  a  reworking  of  "The  Green  Helmet"  (1908), 


THE  DRAMA  III 

and  neither  of  them  marks  an  advance  over  his 
previous  writing,  nor  has  either  achieved  any 
success. 

The  chief  characteristic  of  the  folk-lore  of  prim- 
itive peoples  is  its  indwelling  love  of  magic,  and  to 
this  Celtic  legend  is  no  exception.  We  have  seen 
how  Yeats's  belief  in  magic  and  his  theories  of  the 
occult  affected  his  lyric  verse;  it  is  more  difficult, 
perhaps,  to  understand  how  he  has  reconciled 
with  the  modern  mind  this  love  of  magic,  either 
as  an  interpretation  or  a  symbolism  of  experience, 
in  the  drama,  which  is  necessarily  more  explicit 
than  the  lyric.  In  all  of  his  plays,  however,  even 
those  which  are  not  directly  founded  upon  folk- 
tales, there  is  no  experience  which  cannot  be  in- 
terpreted as  having  occurred  through  the  agency 
of  magic,  and  in  this  Yeats  evidences  his  fidelity 
to  the  psychology  of  legend.  We  have,  in  "The 
Shadowy  Waters,"  Forgael  winning  the  love  of 
Dectora  by  a  magic  spell;  in  ''Deirdre,"  Deirdre 
herself  compels  the  love  of  men  and  sets  Ireland 
at  war  through  her  magical  beauty,  and  Conchu- 
bar  plans  to  win  her  by  magic;  in  "The  Land  of 
Heart's  Desire"  it  is  the  magic  of  vision  that  lures 
Mary  Bruin  to  her  death,  while  in  "The  Countess 
Cathleen"  the  magic  of  evil  is  overcome  by  an 


112  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

equally  potent  spell,  the  magic  of  perfect  faith. 
If,  as  we  like  to  believe,  the  modern  mind  has 
accepted  science  as  an  interpretation  of  experi- 
ence, how  is  it  that  these  fables  contain  the  qual- 
ity of  inevitability?  Perhaps  it  is  because  the 
plays  take  us  to  a  world  out  of  time  and  out  of 
space  in  which  all  things  are  possible;  perhaps  it 
is  because  the  imagination  even  of  the  modern 
mind  finds  in  magic  a  symbolic  interpretation  of 
spiritual  forces  whose  potency  has  found  no  other 
explanation;  perhaps  we,  like  the  musicians  in 
"Deirdre,"  and  like  Yeats  himself  have 

"...  wild  thought 

Fed  on  extravagant  poetry  and  lit 

By  such  a  dazzle  of  old  fabulous  tales 

That  common  things  are  lost,  and  all  that's  strange 

Is  true  because  'twere  pity  if  it  were  not." 

or  perhaps  it  is  because,  with  Plato,  we  believe 
that  there  resides  in  surpassing  beauty  a  com- 
pelling spiritual  power. 

The  work  of  the  other  founders  of  the  Irish 
dramatic  movement  is  overshadowed  by  that  of 
Yeats.  George  Moore  began  his  career  as  a  play- 
wright with  "The  Strike  at  Arlingford"  (1893) 
and  his  incursion  into  the  dramatic  field  was 
attended  by   a  curious  circumstance.     In  "Im- 


THE  DRAMA  II3 

pressions  and  Opinions"  (1891)  Moore  had  se- 
verely criticized  all  the  contemporary  English 
playwrights,  and  so  offended  one  of  them,  G.  R. 
Sims,  a  writer  of  melodrama,  that  Sims  offered 
to  pay  a  hundred  pounds  for  a  stall  to  witness  an 
unconventional  play  by  George  Moore.  Moore 
accepted  the  challenge,  after  insisting  upon  the 
withdrawal  of  the  word  "unconventional"  since, 
were  the  word  retained,  he  would  have  to  abide 
by  Sims's  definition  of  unconventionality  in  dra- 
matic art.  "The  Strike  at  Arlingford"  was  the 
result  of  the  challenge,  and  its  production  by  the 
Independent  Theater,  besides  being  an  event  of 
some  journalistic  importance,  brought  Moore  a 
cheque  of  a  hundred  pounds  from  Sims.  The  play 
itself  does  not  seem,  in  the  perspective  of  twenty- 
three  years,  either  unconventional  or  essentially 
novel  in  theme  or  treatment.  It  was  obviously 
written  under  the  influence  of  Ibsen,  and  unlike 
the  plays  of  Ibsen,  its  characters  do  not  seem  pro- 
jected into  life,  but  arbitrarily  constructed.  In 
the  following  year  Moore  collaborated  with  Mrs. 
Craigie  ("John  Oliver  Hobbes")  upon  "Journeys 
End  in  Lovers'  Meetings,"  and  five  years  later 
was  prevailed  upon  by  his  cousin,  Edward  Martyn, 
to  assist  in   the  production  of  Martyn's  "The 


114  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

Heather  Field."  In  1899  Moore  had  already 
achieved  a  notable  reputation  as  a  novelist  and 
critic,  while  his  quarrel  with  Sims  and  his  connec- 
tion with  the  Independent  Theater  made  him 
considered  something  of  an  authority  upon  the 
drama.  It  is  therefore  obvious  that  Yeats  and 
Martyn,  planning  the  future  of  an  Irish  literary 
theater,  and  practically  inexperienced  in  the 
drama,  should  have  had  recourse  to  a  well-known 
writer  whose  intellectual  curiosity  would  tempt 
him  to  subscribe  to  their  theories,  and  who  hap- 
pened also  to  be  a  prominent  member  of  the  Irish 
aristocracy. 

During  1900,  Martyn's  "The  Tale  of  a  Town," 
written  for  the  Irish  Literary  Theater,  was  re- 
jected by  Moore  and  Yeats,  and  Martyn,  with 
rare  unselfishness,  gave  it  to  Moore  for  revision. 
Moore  rewrote  it  as  "The  Bending  of  the  Bough" 
(1900)  and  under  this  title  it  was  successfully 
given  during  the  company's  second  season.  As 
Moore  wrote  it,  the  play  turned  out  to  be  a  satire 
upon  Irish  political  life  that,  as  Lady  Gregory  has 
written,  "hits  impartially  all  round."  It  was  the 
first  play  dealing  with  a  vital  question  in  modern 
Irish  life  to  be  produced  by  what  later  came  to  be 
the  Abbey  company,  and  for  that  reason,  as  the 


THE  DRAMA  115 

pioneer  of  the  realistic  school  in  Ireland,  it  is  of 
historic  importance.  The  play  is  concerned  with  a 
politician,  Jasper  Dean,  who  betrays  the  interests 
of  his  constituents  in  order  to  please  his  fiancee. 
Martyn  had  laid  his  scene  in  Ireland,  but  Moore, 
in  order,  perhaps,  to  avoid  charges  of  libel,  trans- 
ferred it  to  Scotland,  making  the  allegory  suffi- 
ciently thin  to  enable  the  point  to  penetrate  even 
the  most  thick-skinned  Irish  partisan.  It  is  effec- 
tive as  satire,  although  hardly,  apart  from  its 
incisiveness  as  a  study  of  Irish  affairs,  of  any 
especial  significance  as  a  contribution  to  the  con- 
temporary drama.  Of  "Diarmuid  and  Grania" 
sufficient  has  already  been  said.  Moore  broke 
with  the  dramatic  movement  following  its  produc- 
tion, and  contented  himself  with  pamphleteering 
in  favor  of  the  Abbey.  "The  Apostle,"^  pub- 
lished in  191 1,  is  a  scenario  for  a  play  on  the  life  of 
Christ  preceded  by  a  "letter  upon  reading  the 
Bible  for  the  first  time."  In  this  study,  Moore  has 
represented  the  meeting  of  Jesus  and  of  Paul  in  an 
Essene  monastery  some  years  after  the  Crucifixion; 
Jesus  disapproves  of  the  legend  that  has  grown  up 
around  his  name,  he  is  the  simple  carrier  of  water 

^It  is  reported  that  "The  Apostle"  has  served  as  a  basis 
for  Moore's  forthcoming  novel,  "The  Brook  Kerith." 


Ii6  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

and  hewer  of  logs,  the  shepherd,  in  a  community 
in  whose  scholastic  disputations  he  takes  no  part. 
When  Paul,  the  mystic,  the  prophet,  the  dem- 
agogue comes  into  the  community,  and  tells  the 
Essenes  of  the  gospel  of  Christianity,  Jesus  is 
shocked  to  find  that  his  vision  has  become  a  cult 
held  by  people  who  have  missed  its  profoundest 
meaning.  When  the  identity  of  Jesus  is  disclosed 
to  Paul,  Paul  believes  himself  the  victim  of  an 
hallucination  of  the  Devil,  and  when  Jesus  is 
recognized  by  Mary  Magdalene,  now  an  old 
woman,  Paul  strikes  him  down,  believing  him  an 
impostor,  and  goes  forth  on  his  way  to  Rome. 
The  play,  should  it  ever  come  to  be  written,  will, 
if  one  may  judge  its  probable  qualities  by  those  of 
the  scenario,  possess  a  high  degree  of  dramatic 
interest,  and  will  differ  from  the  many  modern 
plays  in  which  Christ  figures,  in  that  it  presents 
Christ  as  essentially  human;  a  visionary,  a  poet, 
and  the  prophet  of  a  spiritual  democracy. 

"Elizabeth  Cooper"  (1913),  founded  upon  an 
amorous  missive  received  by  Moore,  which  sug- 
gested the  possibility  of  an  adventure  that  the 
author  assures  us  remained  unrealized,  is  a  little 
comedy  of  love  and  mistaken  identity.  It  was 
produced  by  the  Incorporated  Stage  Society  in 


THE  DRAMA  1 17 

London  In  191 3.  A  dramatization  of  "Esther 
Waters"  produced  by  the  Stage  Society  in  the 
previous  year  earned  little  praise  from  either 
critics  or  audience.  Moore  has  not  become  an 
outstanding  figure  in  the  contemporary  drama 
chiefly  because  it  is  an  art  which  he  has  not  studied 
as  carefully  nor  evolved  as  thoroughly  as  that  of 
the  novel;  dramatic  expression  seems  to  have  been 
merely  an  incidental  by-product  of  his  long  expe- 
rience as  a  writer,  and  it  is  probable  that  he  has 
not  taken  it  very  seriously. 

Edward  Martyn  has,  however,  been  conscien- 
tious and  serious  in  all  his  efforts  as  a  playwright. 
His  earliest  essay  in  that  form,  "Morgante  the 
Leper,"  a  "satiric  romance,"  was  published  anon- 
ymously in  1890.  He  was  known  in  Ireland  as  a 
wealthy  landlord,  an  amateur  in  music,  a  deeply 
religious  supporter  of  the  Catholic  Church,  and  a 
Nationalist  in  so  far  as  he  had  any  political  con- 
victions. In  all  he  has  written  six  plays :  "Maeve" 
and  "The  Heather  Field"  in  1899,  "The  Tale  of  a 
Town"  in  1900,  "The  Enchanted  Sea"  in  1902, 
"The  Place  Hunters"  in  1905,  and  "Grangecol- 
man"  in  191 2.  Occasionally,  though  very  infre- 
quently, he  has  written  brief  articles  in  "  Samhain" 
in  explanation  of  his  ideas  of  the  theater,  none  of 


Ii8  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

which  are  as  revealing  as  the  plays  themselves. 
Just  after  the  refusal  of  the  three  other  directors  to 
produce  his  "The  Tale  of  a  Town,"  he  severed  his 
connection  with  the  theater.  Soon  afterward, 
when  the  policy  of  the  movement  had  crystallized, 
and  the  company  was  committed  to  the  production 
of  folk-plays  and  plays  dealing  with  contemporary 
Irish  peasant  life,  Martyn  gave  ten  thousand 
pounds  to  the  Catholic  Pro-Cathedral  of  Dublin 
wherewith  to  establish  a  Palestrina  choir,  thus 
putting  a  definite  end  to  the  hope  that  he  would 
endow  a  theater  of  art. 

In  so  far  as  his  work  is  founded  upon  a  tradition, 
Edward  Martyn  is  a  follower  of  Ibsen,  and  the 
dependence  of  his  work  upon  that  of  the  Nor- 
wegian playwright  is  singularly  close,  both  in  the 
realm  of  ideas  and  in  the  technique  of  their  expres- 
sion. He  stands  in  opposition  to  the  theory  of  the 
peasant  drama  and  to  the  use  of  the  peasant 
dialect  as  a  medium  of  artistic  expression.  His 
plays  are  chiefly  drawn  from  the  life  of  the  middle 
and  upper  classes;  only  one  character  in  all  his 
plays,  that  of  Peg  Inerny  in  "Maeve,"  belongs  to 
the  peasantry,  and  she  is  rather  a  symbol  of  Ire- 
land than  an  individualized  type.  It  can  be  read- 
ily understood  from  what  has  been  said,  at  the 


THE  DRAMA  1 19 

opening  of  this  chapter,  of  the  differences  existing 
between  the  ideas  of  the  Abbey  group  and  the 
prevailing  theory  of  the  drama  in  the  late  nineties, 
that  Martyn's  theories  were  out  of  harmony  with 
those  of  the  other  directors. 

The  obviously  fine  quality  of  his  two  best  plays, 
"Maeve"  and  "The  Heather  Field"  is  the  beauty 
of  idea.  The  first  of  these  is  dramatically  con- 
ceived, and  in  its  high  moments  instinct  with 
passionate  emotional  expression.  "Maeve,"  also, 
is  replete  with  unrealized  poetry.  Both  plays  are 
studies  in  the  contrast  between  spiritual  and 
actual  life,  in  which  the  splendor  of  dream  and  of 
vision,  irreconcilable  with  the  petty  miseries  of 
reality,  are  the  lure  to  final  destruction.  Both 
plays  evidence  a  telling  symbolism;  Garden  Tyrell, 
who  goes  mad  when  his  little  son  brings  him  a 
sprig  of  heather  from  the  mountain  which  he  has 
set  his  heart  upon  reclaiming,  and  Peg  Inerny,  the 
peasant  woman  who  is  a  servitor  by  day,  and  a 
queen  of  the  Sidhe  by  night,  are  equally  figuring 
forth  that  contest  between  vision  and  reality 
which  plays  so  great  a  part  in  the  Irish  mind  and 
in  the  work  of  the  modern  Irish  writers. 

The  plays  that  follow  these  are  relatively  un- 
important; "The  Tale  of  a  Town"  is  a  failure 


I20  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

from  the  point  of  view  of  the  theater,  "The  Place 
Hunters"  crude  farce,  "The  Enchanted  Sea"  an 
Ibsenesque  melodrama,  and  "Grangecolman" 
social  criticism  of  no  very  great  illumination  or 
insight.  One  great  defect  in  Martyn's  art  is  his 
inability  to  realize  feminine  character.  His  dia- 
logue, too,  is,  except  in  rare  instances  of  lyric 
enthusiasm,  labored  and  stiif,  and  conveys  no 
illusion  of  actual  conversation.  For  this  reason 
his  characters,  although  the  underlying  concep- 
tion is  always  very  powerful,  are  deficient  in  veri- 
similitude. He  conceives  character  in  terms  of 
ideas  rather  than  in  terms  of  emotion,  and  where 
emotion  is  present  in  his  plays,  it  is  quite  likely 
to  be  cold  and  hard.  Had  he  been  willing,  like 
Yeats,  to  study  the  dramatic  technique  of  other 
writers,  he  would  have  probably  been  the  accepted 
chronicler  of  one  phase  of  Irish  life,  that  of  the 
decaying  gentry,  the  politicians  and  the  priests. 
As  it  stands,  he  is  a  failure  as  a  dramatist,  but  a 
failure  who  has  enriched  literature  with  one  beau- 
tiful play,  "The  Heather  Field,"  and  an  only  less 
perfect  play,  "Maeve,"  an  exquisite  fancy  to 
which  Yeats  owes  the  inspiration  of  "The  Countess 
Cathleen." 

Lady  Gregory  has  been  the  most  prolific  writer 


THE  DRAMA  121 

of  those  who  founded  the  Abbey  movement.  She 
has  written  twenty-one  plays,  five  volumes  of 
prose,  and  seven  translations  from  the  dramatic 
literatures  of  other  nations.  She  has  been  assid- 
uous in  the  collection  of  dialect  in  the  village  of 
Kiltartan  in  Galway,  and  it  is  in  this  idiom  that 
she  has  written  her  plays,  translations,  and  '*Cuch- 
ulain  of  Muirthemne"  (1902).  In  addition  to 
this,  she  has  lectured  on  Irish  literary  ideals  and 
on  the  work  of  the  Abbey  before  many  audiences, 
has  written  controversial  articles,  and  acted  in  a 
managerial  capacity  both  in  Dublin  and  on  the 
frequent  tours  made  by  the  company.  Many  of 
her  plays  were  written  during  a  transient  period  of 
decline  in  the  production  of  dramatic  material,  in 
order  that  the  activity  of  the  company  might 
continue  without  interruption.  She  began  as  a 
writer  of  comedy,  of  plays,  which,  as  she  writes, 
"Lady  Gregory  calls  comedy,  and  everyone  else, 
farce,"  because  a  contrast  to  the  poetic  tragedies 
of  Yeats  was  the  material  most  urgently  required 
during  the  early  years  of  the  theater.  Her  repu- 
tation as  a  playwright  very  largely  depends  upon 
these  comedies,  and  it  is  the  genre  with  which  her 
name  has  chiefly  been  associated.  Her  plays 
are  built  upon  a  slender  thread  of  material,  in- 


122  THE  CELTIC  DAWN  ' 

sufficient  for  the  creation  of  a  truly  enduring 
drama,  they  illustrate  no  conflict  of  will,  purpose, 
or  passion;  they  lack  the  subtle  discrimination 
and  the  fine  selective  sense  of  the  thoroughly 
trained  dramatist.  They  are,  however,  facile, 
often  witty,  the  record  of  a  gossipy  mind  conscious 
of  its  intellectual  superiority  to  the  picturesque 
incongruities  of  the  life  that  it  has  accurately 
observed.  Her  best  work  has  been  done  in  com- 
edy because  her  talent  is  for  externalized  situa- 
tion, but  drama,  with  Lady  Gregory,  is  almost 
invariably  subordinated  to  the  interest  in  idiom 
and  folk-legend.  With  the  advent  of  Synge,  Lady 
Gregory  began  to  write  plays  of  a  more  serious 
nature,  and  the  fruit  of  this  labor  has  been  her 
two  volumes  of  "Irish  Folk-History  Plays"  (1912) 
and  "The  Goal  Gate,"  (1906),  "The  Rising  of 
the  Moon"  (1907),  a  little  morality  play,  "The 
Travelling  Man"  (1910),  and  "MacDarragh's 
Wife"  (191 2).  Her  finest  achievements  in  the 
three  veins  in  which  she  has  written  have  been 
"The  Canavans"  (1906),  a  comedy  of  folk-history 
written  out  of  her  knowledge  of  the  peasantry; 
"The  Image"  (1909),  another  play  of  peasant 
life,  which,  under  the  guise  of  comedy,  is  a  serious 
indictment  of  the  disposition  to  accept  as  a  cer- 


THE  DRAMA  1 23 

tainty  the  remote  possibility  of  an  event  that  may 
never  be  realized;  and  "The  Goal  Gate,"  a  power- 
ful and  beautiful  little  tragedy  in  the  lives  of  two 
peasant  women.  With  a  knowledge  of  these 
plays  it  becomes  increasingly  difficult  to  give  any 
serious  attention  to  the  earlier  farces  as  represent" 
ing  an  important  contribution  to  the  dramatic 
writing  of  our  time.  They  were  written  to  order, 
possess  a  certain  effectiveness  when  staged  and 
interpreted  by  the  Abbey  Company,  and  are 
sufficiently  obvious  in  their  presentation  of  life 
to  demand  little  or  no  reflective  consideration  of 
their  philosophic  content. 

Both  the  other  founders  of  the  Irish  literary 
revival  have  given  some  attention  to  the  drama. 
Dr.  Hyde's  work  has,  for  the  most  part,  been 
done  in  Gaelic:  "The  Twisting  of  the  Rope" 
(1901),  "Nativity  Play"  (191 1)  and  "The  Tinker 
and  the  Fairy"  have  delighted  many  audiences 
with  their  beauty.  "The  Lost  Saint"  (1912), 
"The  Bursting  of  the  Bubble"  (1903),  "The 
Marriage"  (191 1)  and  "The  Poorhouse"  (1903), 
written  in  collaboration  with  Lady  Gregory,  have 
all  scored  some  success.  "The  Poorhouse"  has 
since  its  production  been  discarded  by  Dr.  Hyde, 
and  rewritten  by  Lady  Gregory  as  "The  Work- 


124  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

house  Ward"  (1908).  The  sole  contribution  to 
the  drama  made  by  A.  E.  has  been  "Deirdre,"  a 
three  act  play  in  prose,  written  at  the  request  of 
the  Fays  and  produced  with  Yeats's  ''Cathleen 
ni  Houlihan"  in  1902.  The  play  is  poetic  in  its 
conception,  written  in  an  almost  chiselled  prose, 
but  it  fails  as  vital  drama,  although  the  qualities 
of  its  beauty  are  abundant.  Neither  A.  E.  nor 
Dr.  Hyde  can  be  considered  essentially  dramatic 
writers,  although  the  influence  of  the  one  led 
directly  to  the  "Deirdre  of  the  Sorrows"  of 
Synge;  and  that  of  the  other  has  been  felt  in  every 
folk-play  that  has  been  written  in  Ireland  since 
the  late   nineties. 

With  the  production,  on  October  8th,  1903,  of 
"In  the  Shadow  of  the  Glen,"  a  new  name,  des- 
tined to  become  the  most  widely  known  of  those 
connected  with  the  literature  of  modern  Ireland, 
appeared  on  the  playbills  of  the  Irish  National 
Theatre  Society.  John  Millington  Synge  ^  was 
born  in  1871,  at  Rathfarnham,  near  Dublin.     As 

^The  standard  authority  on  Synge  is  Maurice  Bourgeois, 
"John  M.  Synge  and  the  Irish  Theatre,"  Constable  and  Co., 
Ltd.,  London,  191 3.  See  also  W.  B.  Yeats,  "Synge  and  the 
Ireland  of  His  Time,"  Cuala  Press,  191 1 ;  Masefield,  "Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography,"  2d  Supp.,  Vol.  III.  "Con- 
temporary Review,"  April,  191 1 ;  "John  M.  Synge,"  by  John 


THE  DRAMA  125 

a  child  he  lived  much  in  County  Wicklow,  learned 
to  speak  Irish,  was  a  student  of  music,  and  spent 
most  of  his  time  tramping  the  Wicklow  mountains, 
learning  about  birds  and  trees.  He  graduated 
from  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  and  went  to  Ger- 
many with  some  idea  of  becoming  a  professional 
musician.  His  aims  seem  to  have  been  some- 
what chaotic;  he  was  at  this  time  well  versed  in 
both  Irish  and  Hebrew,  in  which  languages  he  had 
taken  prizes  at  Trinity,  and  he  studied  the  theory 
as  well  as  the  practice  of  music.  From  Germany 
he  went  to  Paris,  and,  during  the  next  few  years, 
travelled,  notably  in  Italy.  He  gave  up  the  idea 
of  being  anything  more  than  an  amateur  of  music, 
and  devoted  himself  to  the  study  of  French,  doing 
desultory  literary  criticism  and  some  journalism. 
He  studied  ancient  Irish  at  the  College  de  France, 
joined  a  Young  Ireland  Society  in  Paris,  and,  in 
1898,  met  William  Butler  Yeats.  To  Yeats  must 
be  given  the  credit  of  having  discovered  the  most 
discussed  of  Irish  playwrights.  He  had  just 
spent  a  day  on  the  Aran  Islands,  whither  he  per- 

Masefield;  Lady  Gregory,  "Our  Irish  Theatre,"  Maunsel, 
Dublin,  1913.  This  Hst  is  confined  to  extended  treatment 
by  those  who  knew  Synge.  Mr.  Bourgeois'  volume  has  the 
advantage  of  having  been  officially  approved  by  the  Synge 
family. 


126  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

suaded  Synge  to  go,  telling  him  of  the  primitive 
life  there,  and  encouraging  him  to  seek  a  literary 
reputation  in  Ireland  by  forewarning  him  of  his 
failure  to  attain  success  as  a  critic  of  French 
literature.  Synge  went  to  Aran  later  in  the  year, 
and  subsequently  made  two  other  visits.  He 
also  travelled  through  Wicklow  and  Kerry,  and 
through  the  congested  districts  of  Connemara, 
at  a  later  date,  and  wrote  his  impressions  of  them. 
He  became  one  of  the  little  group  that  was  trying 
to  foster  the  development  of  a  national  drama, 
and  was  actively  associated  in  the  management 
of  the  Abbey  from  its  opening,  in  1904.  By  this 
time  two  plays  of  his  had  already  been  pro- 
duced: "In  the  Shadow  of  the  Glen"  in  1903,  and 
"Riders  to  the  Sea"  in  1904.  Both  had  been 
written  in  1902,  as  had  also  "The  Tinker's  Wed- 
ding," which  has  not  yet  been  produced  in  Ire- 
land. "The  Well  of  the  Saints,"  written  in  1904, 
was  produced  in  1905;  "The  Playboy  of  the  West- 
ern World,"  written  in  1906,  was  produced  in  1907. 
"Deirdre  of  the  Sorrows"  upon  which  he  was  at 
work  until  the  day  of  his  death,  March  24th,  1909, 
was  produced  as  he  had  left  it,  in  1910.  The 
first  two  plays  are  in  one  act,  the  third  in  two  acts, 
and  the  following  three  all  in  three  acts. 


THE  DRAMA  \^^ 

There  exists  In  the  work  of  Synge  the  not  unu- 
sual correspondence  between  a  delicate  physical 
organization  and  a  taste  for  the  heightened  emo- 
tional activity  of  contest  with  the  rough  and 
turbulent  elementary  forces  from  which  it  is  pre- 
cluded. In  all  of  Synge's  plays  there  is  empha- 
sized this  aspiration  to  a  wider  personal  experience 
of  the  passionate  moments  of  life;  it  Is  the  motivat- 
ing force  of  all  choice  and  activity;  It  Is  forced 
into  relief  with  tragic  intensity  by  the  irony  of 
circumstance  that  alone  obstructs  its  progress. 
This  theme  of  eagerness  for  a  more  Impassioned 
life  Is  largely  the  reflection  of  the  man's  personality; 
but  he  was  fortunate  enough  to  be  able  to  choose 
his  dramatic  material  from  among  a  people  in 
whom  it  is  a  predominating  characteristic.  He 
loved  chiefly  what  was  wild  and  primitive  In  Irish 
life;  for  the  modern  age  of  industrialism  he  had 
little  sympathy,  for  he  felt  that  it  was  robbing  life 
of  the  quality  of  its  zestful  moments,  and  his 
dramatic  Instinct  led  him  to  value  only  the  cli- 
maxes of  high  passion  and  bitter  contest  In  an 
otherwise  drab  existence.  Life  transfigured  by  the 
imagination  of  a  poet  is  the  substance  of  his  drama; 
he  offers  no  solution,  spiritual  or  moral,  content 
merely  with  Its  faithful  report.     His  sole  personal 


128  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

comment  lies  in  the  ruthless  irony  which  impreg- 
nates, with  the  exception  of  "Riders  to  the  Sea" 
and  "Deirdre,"  the  whole  of  his  art.  And  in  his 
feeling  that  only  in  the  quest  of  a  wider  experience 
of  life,  intellectual,  physical,  and  spiritual,  can  the 
spirit  of  man  attain  emotional  satisfaction,  lies 
whatever  constructive  philosophy  is  offered  by  his 
art.  Synge,  although  he  was  the  first  dramatist 
to  construct  a  powerful  play  in  the  dialect  of  the 
west,  was  not  the  first  to  employ  that  dialect.  It 
had  an  earlier  literary  usage  in  the  "Cuchulain  of 
Muirthemne"  of  Lady  Gregory,  and  in  Doctor 
Hyde's  translations,  but  Synge,  writing  of  a  life 
that,  in  its  external  relations,  is  limited  to  a  little 
known  locality  in  a  language  equally  limited,  was 
the  first  to  rise  above  the  essential  narrowness  im- 
plicit in  these  limitations  and  construct  a  drama 
of  universal  interest.  He  labored  incessantly 
with  the  vehicle  of  his  expression,  adding,  as  he 
learned,  to  its  exuberance,  to  its  fantasy,  to  its 
poetry,  and  finally  he  attained  that  perfect  har- 
mony of  form  and  content  that  is  the  index  of 
true  art. 

His  theories  of  the  art  of  the  playwright  are 
stated  in  the  prefaces  to  "The  Tinker's  Wedding," 
"The  Playboy,"  and  "Poems  and  Translations." 


THE  DRAMA  1 29 

Primarily  he  reacted  against  the  influence  of 
Yeats  and  the  theories  for  which  that  poet  stood. 
Mysticism  and  an  over  accentuated  spirituality 
seemed  to  him  to  have  little  in  common  with  the 
life  of  the  Irish  peasant;  the  poetry  of  legend, 
seeking  a  refuge  from  the  experience  of  the  com- 
mon life,  proved  too  remote  from  reality  for  one 
to  whom  the  standards  of  an  art  out  of  relation 
with  life  were  repellent.  "On  the  stage,"  he  wrote, 
"one  must  have  reality,  and  one  must  have  joy; 
and  that  Is  why  the  intellectual  modern  drama 
has  failed  and  people  have  grown  sick  of  the  false 
joy  of  the  musical  comedy,  that  has  been  given 
them  in  place  of  the  rich  joy  found  only  in  what  is 
superb  and  wild  in  reality."  He  rebelled  also 
against  the  didactic  drama,  the  play  of  intellectual 
problems,  and  an  art  concerned  with  propaganda. 
"The  drama,  like  the  symphony,  does  not  teach 
or  prove  anything."  His  whole  theory  seems  to 
rest  upon  the  assumption  that  the  drama,  if  it  is 
to  attain  true  poetic  exaltation,  must  have  its 
roots  firmly  fixed  in  homely  reality.  And,  finally, 
the  "drama  is  made  serious  not  by  the  degree 
with  which  it  is  taken  up  with  problems  that  are 
serious  in  themselves,  but  by  the  degree  in  which 
it  gives  the  nourishment,  not  very  easy  to  define. 


I30  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

on  which  our  imaginations  live";  and  chief  among 
the  qualities  which  furnished  this  nourishment  of 
the  imagination,  Synge  ranked  humor. 

In  a  little  essay  on  "The  Vagrants  of  Wicklow" 
Synge  has  given  a  most  complete  account  of  his 
conception  of  character,  and  the  paragraph  serves 
so  well  as  an  explanation  of  his  choice  of  subject- 
matter  that  it  may  be  quoted  in  full.  "In  all  the 
circumstances  of  this  tramp  life  there  is  a  certain 
wildness  that  gives  it  romance  and  a  peculiar 
value  for  those  who  look  at  life  in  Ireland  with  an 
eye  that  is  aware  of  the  arts  also.  In  all  the 
healthy  movements  of  art,  variations  from  the 
ordinary  types  of  manhood  are  made  interesting 
for  the  ordinary  man,  and  in  this  way  only,  the 
higher  arts  are  universal.  Beside  this  art,  how- 
ever, founded  upon  the  variations  which  are  a 
condition  and  effect  of  all  vigorous  life,  there  is 
another  art — sometimes  confounded  with  it — 
founded  on  the  freak  of  nature,  in  itself  a  mere 
sign  of  atavism  or  disease.  This  latter  art,  which 
is  occupied  with  the  antics  of  the  freak,  is  of  inter- 
est only  to  the  variation  from  ordinary  minds  and 
for  this  reason  is  never  universal. ,  To  be  quite 
plain,  the  tramp  in  real  life,  Hamlet  and  Faust  in 
the  arts,  are  variations;  but  the  maniac  in  real 


THE  DRAMA  131 

life,  and  Des  Esseintes  and  all  his  ugly  crew  in  the 
arts,  are  freaks  only." 

His  art,  indeed,  is  just  as  surely  the  art  of  the 
variation  as  was  that  of  Shakespeare  or  Goethe. 
It  would  be  difficult  for  a  critic  with  a  love  for 
classification  to  fit  the  spirit  of  Synge's  plays  into 
any  of  the  customary  literary  pigeon-holes.  A 
realist  he  undoubtedly  was  in  that  he  founded  his 
art  entirely  upon  reality  of  experience  as  he  had 
observed  It.  On  the  other  hand,  his  very  cult  of 
the  variation  made  him  seek  the  unusual,  and  the 
romantic  episodes  that  are  sharply  delineated 
from  the  common  tenor  of  life  prove  him  to  a  cer- 
tain extent  a  romanticist.  It  is  difficult,  also, 
to  reconcile  to  that  profound  irony  of  his  art,  the 
Intense  joy  In  life  that  is  one  of  its  most  prominent 
characteristics.  Delight  In  nature,  in  the  physi- 
cal beauty  of  women,  in  the  wild  life  of  the  roads 
is  joined  with  the  consciousness  of  a  very  Immi- 
nent death.  But  although  Synge's  view  of  life 
was  preeminently  tragic,  his  only  play  in  which 
tragedy  Is  the  unrelieved  and  dominating  mood, 
"Riders  to  the  Sea,"  is  the  least  characteristic  of 
his  writings.  Synge  was  a  theorist  neither  about 
art  nor  about  morals,  and  in  none  of  his  plays  is 
there  to  be  found  any  expression  of  the  views  of 


132  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

their  author.  For  these  views  the  reader  must 
go  to  his  two  volumes  of  travel  sketches,  "The 
Aran  Islands"  and  "In  Wicklow  and  West  Kerry," 
and  to  his  poems.  These  latter  reveal  him  most 
completely;  in  them  there  is  the  mordant  irony, 
the  love  of  the  grotesque,  the  sense  of  the  brevity 
and  the  incompleteness  of  life,  the  reaction  against 
the  etiolated  spiritual  beauty  cultivated  by  A.  E. 
and  by  Yeats,  and  the  abiding  love  of  nature  and 
of  life  that  illuminate  his  plays.  The  travel  note- 
books contain  the  earliest  indications  of  the  back- 
grounds of  his  plays.  In  their  recreation  of  the 
daily  life  of  the  peasantry,  in  their  clear  cut  de- 
scription, and  even  in  the  conversation  recorded, 
they  illustrate  the  power  of  reproducing  concrete 
impressions  that  is  one  of  the  most  important  ele- 
ments of  Synge's  dramatic  instinct. 

The  question  of  Synge's  fidelity  to  Irish  life  has 
been  debated  more  often  with  less  profit  than  any 
other  purely  literary  question  that  has  arisen  out 
of  the  work  of  the  Abbey  playwrights.  One  has 
but  to  remember  the  tempestuous  scenes  that 
greeted  the  first  production  of  "The  Playboy"  in 
Dublin  in  1907  and  in  the  United  States  in  191 1 
to  appreciate  the  animosity  aroused  by  his  work 
among  certain  groups  of  Irishmen.     The  decision 


THE  DRAMA  133 

of  the  directors  to  retain  the  play  despite  all  oppo- 
sition was  the  turning  point  in  the  fortunes  of  the 
theater.  Had  the  directors  succumbed  to  public 
feeling,  Synge  would  have  remained  an  unknown 
writer.  The  primary  truth  of  his  plays  to  Irish 
life  lies  in  their  delineation  of  the  conflict  between 
reality  and  the  ideal  which  is  characteristic  of  the 
Celtic  consciousness.  Synge  was  neither  the 
first  nor  the  only  playwright  of  the  Abbey  group 
to  employ  this  theme;  it  is  implicit  in  the  work  of 
Yeats,  and  there  it  assumes  an  autobiographic 
aspect;  it  has  been  satirized  by  Lady  Gregory,  and 
conceived  in  a  purely  dramatic  vein  by  many  of 
the  younger  writers.  The  chief  infidelity  of  his 
work  to  Irish  life  is,  as  M.  Bourgeois  has  pointed 
out,  his  total  disregard  of  the  religious  life  of  the 
people  in  a  country  where  that  phase  of  experience 
plays  almost  the  greatest  individual  role  in  the 
daily  life  of  the  community. 

Synge's  plays  have  tv/o  analogues  in  literary 
manner.  On  the  one  hand  they  resemble  the 
medieval  French  farces,  and  to  a  certain  degree 
the  pungent  raciness  of  Rabelais.  On  the  other, 
they  partake  of  the  nature  and  sophisticated 
cynicism  and  irony  of  the  novels  of  Anatole  France. 
We  know  that  Synge  was  familiar  with  this  ma- 


134  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

terial,  and  it  may  be  counted,  just  as  the  work  of 
Pierre  Loti  has  been  counted,  an  influence  upon 
his  art.  But  in  the  final  analysis  Synge  is  a  clearly 
original,  and  not  a  derivative  writer. 

His  employment  of  the  peasant  idiom  marks 
the  highest  achievement  in  its  use  as  a  medium 
of  literary  expression.  He  amplified  and  enriched 
the  vocabulary  that  he  had  learned  from  his  life 
in  Aran,  and  that  which  he  had  gleaned  during 
his  life  as  a  child  among  the  Gaelic  speaking 
peasantry  of  Wicklow,  making  it  ever  more 
poetic,  more  musical  and  more  rhythmic.  It  is 
this  last  quality  of  rhythm  that  distinguishes  his 
work  from  all  other  contemporary  prose,  and 
in  which  consists  his  innovation  as  a  literary 
artist. 

The  literary  biography  of  Padraic  Colum  is 
brief.  Two  early  plays  concerned  with  folk-lore 
and  with  medieval  history  failed  to  be  either  pro- 
duced or  published.  By  1902  he  had  written 
and  published  four  plays,  one  of  which,  "The 
Saxon  Shillin'",  achieved  success  because  of  its 
propagandist  material.  All  four  plays,  the  other 
three  were  entitled  "The  Kingdom  of  the  Young," 
"The  Foleys"  and  "Eoghan's  Wife,"  dealt  with 
peasant  life  in  the  Irish  midlands,  of  which  he  has 


THE  DRAMA  135 

since  become  the  chief  chronicler.  The  follow- 
ing year  marked  his  entrance  and  that  of  Synge 
into  the  company  of  playwrights  whose  work  has 
been  produced  at  the  Abbey.  His  play  was 
"Broken  Soil."  It  was  his  ambition  at  that  time, 
as  he  confesses  in  the  preface  to  "Thomas  Mus- 
kerry,"  to  write  in  dramatic  form  a  comedie  hu- 
maine  of  Irish  life,  and  in  a  measure  his  subse- 
quent work  has  been  a  partial  fulfillment  of  that 
desire.  The  production  of  "Broken  Soil"  con- 
vinced its  author  that  revision  of  the  text  was  de- 
sirable, and  the  play  was  withdrawn,  rewritten, 
and  produced  four  years  later  as  "The  Fiddler's 
House."  During  the  interval  he  wrote  two  other 
plays,  both  of  which  were  successfully  produced, 
"The  Miracle  of  the  Corn"  in  1904,  and  "The 
Land"  in  1905.  In  1907  he  wrote  "The  Desert" 
upon  a  theme  later  developed  by  Edward  Knob- 
lauch in  "Kismet;"  it  would  probably  not  have 
been  published  had  not  "  Kismet "  scored  a  suc- 
cess during  its  Dublin  production.  In  the  same 
year  he  published  the  two  little  stories  which,  with 
a  reprint  of  "The  Miracle  of  the  Corn,"  make  up 
the  little  booklet  called  "Studies."  In  1909  ap- 
peared his  volume  of  lyric  verse,  "Wild  Earth," 
and  in  the  following  year  he  produced  his  two 


136  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

most  recent  plays,  "Thomas  Muskerry"  and  "The 
Destruction  of  the  Hostel." 

With  Padraic  Colum  the  emphasis  is  placed 
upon  situation  rather  than  upon  character  or 
atmosphere,  for,  as  he  writes  in  the  preface  to 
"Thomas  Muskerry":  "The  dramatist  is  con- 
cerned not  primarily  with  the  creation  of  char- 
acter, but  with  the  creation  of  situation.  For 
character  conceived  as  a  psychological  synthesis 
he  has  only  a  secondary  concern.  His  main 
effort  is  always  towards  the  creation  of  situations 
that  will  produce  a  powerful  impression  on  an 
audience,  for  it  is  situation  that  makes  the  strong- 
est appeal  to  our  sympathies."  He  too,  like 
Synge,  and  like  many  other  dramatists  of  the 
modern  school,  is  a  regional  playwright,  but 
whereas  Synge  succeeded  in  compelling  the  in- 
terest of  his  audience  in  spite  of  an  unfamiliar 
locale,  Colum's  locale  does  not  create  the  play 
itself  nor  set  the  terms  of  its  problem. 

In  the  three  plays  of  contemporary  Irish  life 
which  he  has  written,  the  fundamental  problem 
in  each  case  arises  from  the  life  of  the  family,  into 
which  each  member,  actuated  by  self  interest,  has 
put  his  spiritual  and  physical  energies,  and  in  the 
effort  to  regain  an  independent  existence,  is  con- 


THE  DRAMA  137 

fronted  by  another  with  a  conflicting  purpose. 
In  "Thomas  Muskerry"  it  is  the  grandfather  who 
is  sacrificed  to  the  younger  generation;  In  "The 
Land"  it  is  the  strong  and  the  educated  who 
desert  the  hardly  won  farm  for  the  lure  of  America, 
leaving  the  soil  to  the  witless  and  weak;  in  "The 
Fiddler's  House"  it  Is  the  father  who,  possessed 
with  the  soul  of  an  artist,  and  imbued  with  the 
wanderlust,  destroys  both  the  home  and  the 
happiness  of  his  elder  daughter.  The  life  of  the 
family,  although  productive  of  dramatic  situa- 
tion, is  not  the  sole  generating  cause  of  action  in 
his  plays.  Love  of  land,  of  the  road,  the  revolt 
of  youth  from  tradition,  and  its  decision  to  live 
its  own  life  are  the  determining  factors  In  the 
motivation  of  his  plays. 

In  "The  Land,"  which  he  characterizes  as  an 
"agrarian  comedy,"  the  action  takes  place  during 
the  operation  of  the  Wyndham  Act  of  1903,  which 
provided  for  the  purchase  by  the  peasantry  of  the 
land  upon  which  they  had  been  settled,  but  of 
which  their  tenure  had  previously  existed  only  at 
the  pleasure  of  the  landlord.  Martin  Douras 
is  a  peasant  with  an  education  and  a  tendency  of 
mind  that  unfit  him  for  the  agricultural  life.  In 
the  gratification  of  his  desire  for  Intellectual  calm, 


138  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

he  has  allowed  his  farm  to  be  ruined  by  his  windy 
and  vacillating  son,  Cornelius,  while  his  daugh- 
ter, Ellen,  who  has  received  a  convent  education, 
has  been  influenced  by  the  profitless  life  of  her 
home  to  a  disgust  both  with  life  on  a  farm,  and 
with  the  life  of  a  country  schoolteacher  for  which 
she  has  been  trained.  In  love  with  her  is  Matt 
Cosgar,  the  son  of  Murtagh  Cosgar,  a  well  to  do 
farmer,  who  at  the  opening  of  the  play,  has  just 
completed  the  purchase  of  his  farm.  Full  of  am- 
bition for  the  future  of  his  family,  he  quarrels 
with  his  son  because  of  the  love  affair  with  Ellen, 
and  forbids  their  marriage.  His  disregard  for 
the  wishes  of  his  children  has  already  caused 
all  but  Matt  and  his  witless  sister  Sally  to  emi- 
grate to  America.  Matt,  having  quarrelled  with 
his  father,  finds  his  love  for  Ellen  in  conflict  with 
the  love  that  he  has  for  the  land,  which  is  to 
be  his  if  he  will  give  up  Ellen;  finally,  however, 
Ellen  decides  that,  rather  than  be  the  wife  of  a 
farmer,  she  will  emigrate  to  America,  where  there 
are  crowds,  where  there  is  progress,  where  life  has 
the  quality  of  contest,  and  Matt,  bidding  defiance 
to  his  father,  goes  with  her,  sacrifices  the  life  that 
he  cares  for  at  the  moment  when  its  opportunity 
is  greatest,  and  allows  the  farm  to  pass  to  Sally 


THE  DRAMA  139 

and  the  incapable  Cornelius.  The  tragedy  lies  with 
father  and  son,  both  having  the  same  object  at 
heart,  equally  implacable  of  purpose,  both  defeated. 
"The  Fiddler's  House"  is  the  tale  of  Conn 
Hourican,  old  in  years  and  young  In  heart,  who 
in  former  time  had  been  a  fiddler  of  renown,  and 
a  man  of  the  roads,  and  who  finds  it  difficult  to 
settle  down  on  the  bit  of  a  farm  that  his  elder 
daughter,  Maire,  has  inherited  from  her  grand- 
mother. The  younger  daughter,  Anne,  is  domes- 
tic in  her  taste,  loving  quiet  and  peace,  and  the 
simple  life  of  the  farm,  in  contrast  with  which  the 
dimly  remembered  life  of  the  road  seems  a  thing 
of  horror.  She  is  betrothed  to  James  Moynihan, 
a  youngster  of  poetic  nature,  whose  father  refuses 
to  allow  his  marriage  to  a  dowerless  girl.  Maire, 
however,  is  the  child  of  her  father,  restive,  ex- 
citable, but  of  firmer  purpose;  she  has  fallen  in 
love  with  a  tempestuous  farmer  named  Brian 
MacConnel,  and  it  is  this  love  of  which  she  is 
afraid.  Finally,  when  her  father  has  announced 
his  intention  of  again  taking  to  the  road,  she 
deeds  the  farm  to  her  sister,  who  can  then  marry 
the  man  of  her  choice,  and  fearful  lest  her  own 
love  for  Brian  be  too  consuming,  she  leaves  him, 
and  goes  off  on  the  roads  with  her  father. 


140  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

"Thomas  Muskerry"  is  the  most  powerful  play 
of  the  three,  for  it  deals  with  the  dull  monotony  of 
existence  in  a  small  Irish  town.  Thomas  Mus- 
kerry himself  has  for  thirty  years  been  master  of 
the  workhouse  at  Garrisowen,  and  intends  to  re- 
tire on  his  pension,  purchase  a  small  cottage,  and 
live  in  comparative  peace  for  the  remainder  of 
his  days.  His  daughter,  Marianne,  is  the  wife  of 
an  unsuccessful  shopkeeper,  who,  it  develops 
during  the  course  of  the  action,  has  discounted 
some  notes  for  a  man  who  has  subsequently  de- 
faulted. Their  daughter,  Anna,  wishes  to  marry 
James  Scollard,  a  bumptious  young  man  whom 
Muskerry,  in  order  to  please  Anna,  has  succeeded 
in  having  appointed  his  successor.  The  grand- 
father's life  has  been  one  of  constant  self  efface- 
ment  for  his  family,  and  when  his  daughter  asks 
him  to  sacrifice  his  own  future  comfort  in  order  to 
save  the  reputation  of  the  Crillys,  he  feels  justified 
in  his  refusal.  Finally,  however,  he  agrees  to  live 
with  them,  but  their  ill  treatment  drives  him  to 
seek  refuge  in  the  workhouse  of  which  he  had  been 
master.  His  son  in  law's  unfortunate  experience 
has  jeopardized  not  only  his  own  but  likewise 
Muskerry's  savings,  so  that  he  is  forced  to  abide 
in  the  pauper  ward.     The  sequence  of  little  trag- 


THE  DRAMA  141 

edies  culminates  in  his  discovery  that,  because  of 
his  humane  management  of  the  institution,  he 
stands  in  debt  to  the  amount  of  fifty  pounds.  The 
debts  incurred  by  Crilly  and  the  necessity  for 
providing  a  dowry  for  Anna  have  wiped  out  his 
savings.  Muskerry,  weakened  and  aged  by  the 
annoyance  to  which  he  has  been  subjected,  dies 
of  an  apoplectic  stroke  at  the  precise  moment  that 
one  of  his  former  charges,  a  blind  piper,  is  set  free 
upon  the  roads.  The  bitter  satire  of  the  play  lies 
not  only  in  the  characterization  of  the  Crillys,  the 
impotent  father,  the  tricky  son,  the  selfish  and 
brutal  daughter,  and  the  harassed  mother,  nor 
in  the  striking  portrait  of  the  vindictive  and 
cynical  porter  Felix  Tournour,  but  transfigures 
the  whole  situation  that  makes  Thomas  Muskerry 
a  village  King  Lear. 

"The  Miracle  of  the  Corn"  is  a  little  study  in 
symbolism,  in  which  a  child  of  dreams,  Aislinn, 
softens  the  heart  of  a  dour  old  farmer  in  famine 
time,  and  when  he  has  exhausted  his  store  of  corn 
in  gifts  to  his  neighbors,  the  bins  are  miraculously 
refilled.  This  one  little  play  is  the  only  evidence 
in  all  of  his  published  work  of  an  art  that  is  deli- 
cate and  fine  and  minute,  an  art  so  exquisite  in  the 
embodiment  of  its  conception  that  the  dual  illusion 


142  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

of  actuality  and  dream  is  perfectly  sustained,  and 
leaves  the  reader  in  doubt  as  to  whether  the  child 
Aislinn  is  a  child  of  reality  or  the  physical  expres- 
sion of  the  desires  of  Sheila  and  her  husband.  In 
"The  Flute-Player's  Story,"  one  of  the  two  little 
tales  of  the  same  volume,  there  is  substantial  evi- 
dence of  his  abundant  humor.  The  humor  of 
his  plays,  however,  is  more  strictly  the  humor  of 
circumstance  as  it  appears  to  the  observer  whose 
point  of  view  is  that  of  a  purely  impersonal  de- 
tachment, it  springs  rather  from  the  logic  of  events 
than  from  accentuation  of  character,  for  to  him 
character  is  conditioned  by  the  external  situation 
to  which  it  reacts,  and  from  this  point  of  view 
the  consistency  of  its  psychology  in  his  plays  is 
unimpeachable.  His  humor  is  bitter  and  harsh; 
irony  and  tragedy  are  its  component  elements. 

Lord  Dunsany,  although  he  has  concerned  him- 
self little  with  either  the  legend  or  the  contempo- 
rary life  of  Ireland,  has  identified  himself  with  the 
Celtic  literary  movement,  and  is  the  author  of 
six  plays  and  several  volumes  of  short  tales  and 
prose  poems.  A  little  volume  of  "Five  Plays," 
containing  "The  Gods  of  the  Mountain,"  "The 
Golden  Doom,"  "King  Argimenes  and  the  Un- 
known  Warrior,"    "The   Glittering   Gate"    and 


THE  DRAMA  143 

"The  Lost  Silk  Hat,"  appeared  in  1914.  His 
sixth  play,  "A  Night  at  an  Inn,"  received  its  first 
performance  on  any  stage  at  the  Neighborhood 
Playhouse  in  New  York,  a  theater  connected  with 
the  Henry  Street  Settlement  and  devoted  to  the 
use  of  a  company  of  amateur  actors  and  actresses 
recruited  from  the  settlement,  on  April  22nd,  19 16. 
The  predominating  quality  of  Lord  Dunsany's 
talent  lies  in  the  richness  of  his  imagination;  he 
has  created  an  oriental  mythology  existing  apart 
from  the  limits  of  time,  although  the  ultimate 
struggle  is  that  of  man  and  the  gods  against  ruin- 
ing time.  With  exquisite  irony  and  no  little 
humor,  for  he  is  a  master  of  strongly  objectified 
situation,  he  portrays  the  combat  of  man  with  the 
gods,  the  creations  of  his  own  ignorance,  for  the 
gods  are  merely  the  symbolic  expression  of  man's 
lack  of  control  over  his  experience,  and,  with  time 
the  destroyer,  the  illustrations  of  man's  ultimate 
futility.  The  events  of  his  plays,  like  those  of 
the  tales  that  he  has  written,  are  similar  in  cir- 
cumstance to  the  tales  of  wonder  and  of  magic  in 
the  Arabian  nights.  In  "King  ArgimQnes"  a 
captive  sovereign  finds  a  sword  and  by  means  of 
it  makes  himself  again  a  king;  in  "The  Gods  of 
the  Mountain"   seven   beggars   Impersonate   the 


144  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

gods  and  receive  the  gifts  and  the  veneration  of  the 
people  until  the  gods  themselves  come  down  from 
their  mountain  and  turn  the  impostors  into  stone; 
in  "The  Golden  Doom"  a  child  writes  a  poem 
with  a  golden  nugget  on  the  king's  great  door,  and 
the  king,  thinking  it  a  prophecy  of  doom  written 
by  the  gods,  is  humbled  in  his  pride,  leaving  his 
crown  as  an  offering  of  appeasement  to  the  deities, 
whereupon  the  child  takes  it  away,  and  the  king 
believes  himself  saved.  In  "A  Night  at  an  Inn" 
a  band  of  rogues,  led  by  a  decayed  aristocrat, 
have  stolen  the  great  ruby  from  the  statue  of  an 
Indian  god.  The  priests  follow  them  to  an  inn  in 
England,  but  one  by  one  are  killed.  Finally, 
when  all  is  thought  safe,  the  rogues  are  summoned 
one  by  one  to  the  garden,  where  an  avenging 
justice  awaits  them  in  the  person  of  the  god  him- 
self, who  wreaks  on  each  a  terrible  vengeance. 
"The  Glittering  Gate"  and  "The  Lost  Silk  Hat" 
are  little  farces,  the  one  telling  of  the  adventures 
of  two  dead  burglars  before  the  gate  of  heaven, 
the  other,  of  a  sundered  romance  and  its  happy 
conclusion.  Lord  Dunsany  has  contributed  to 
the  dramatic  literature  of  the  Celtic  revival  a 
plenitude  of  wit  and  myth-making  imagination, 
and  a  beautiful  prose  style  poetically  cadenced. 


THE  DRAMA  145 

The  younger  playwrights  of  the  Abbey  group 
are,  for  the  most  part,  realists  and  students  of  the 
contemporary  life  of  the  Irish  peasantry.  Few 
of  them  are  known  on  this  side  of  the  water  ex- 
cept those  whose  plays  appeared  in  the  repertory 
of  the  Abbey  company  on  its  American  tour  of 
1911-12.  The  most  important  in  point  of  dra- 
matic accomplishment  have  been  S.  Lennox 
Robinson,  who  is  at  present  the  producing  direc- 
tor of  the  company,  T.  C.  Murray,  St.  John  G. 
Ervine,  "Rutherford  Mayne,"  "Norreys  Con- 
nell"  (Conal  O'Riordan),  who  succeeded  Synge 
as  one  of  the  directors,  George  Fitzmaurice, 
Thomas  MacDonagh,  Seumas  O'Kelly  and  Wil- 
liam Boyle.  Plays  of  worth  have  also  been 
written  by  Johanna  Redmond,  by  Lewis  Purcell, 
and  by  Terence  J.  MacSwiney,  although  these 
writers  have  not  been  connected  with  the  Abbey. 

Lennox  Robinson  has  written  five  plays:  "The 
Clancy  Name"  (1908),  "The  Crossroads"  (1909), 
"Harvest"  (1910),  "Patriots"  (1912)  and  "The 
Dreamers"  (1915).  "The  Clancy  Name"  is  a 
tragic  story  of  the  Widow  Clancy's  shortlived 
happiness.  She  has  paid  off  her  debts,  and  is 
arranging  to  marry  her  son  to  a  well  dowered  girl, 
when   the   son   confesses   to  a   murder   that  has 


146  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

puzzled  the  district.  She  is  horrified,  but  refuses 
to  let  him  give  himself  up  to  the  police,  as  he 
wishes,  and  he,  conscience-stricken,  throws  him- 
self under  a  passing  cart  to  save  a  child  from  being 
run  down  by  the  drunken  driver.  He  is  brought 
to  the  house,  and  murmurs  incoherently  of  the 
murder,  which  is  still  in  his  consciousness,  but 
dies  a  hero  before  the  neighbors  can  learn  anything 
that  will  sully  the  Clancy  name.  The  excellence 
of  the  play  is  wholly  dependent  upon  the  charac- 
terization of  Mrs.  Clancy,  the  typical  resource- 
ful, energetic  farmer's  wife. 

The  next  three  plays  in  succession  are  vital 
drama,  each  of  them  carrying  a  criticism  of  some 
phase  of  Irish  life.  This  faculty  for  criticism  is 
not  limited,  however,  to  this  particular  author; 
it  seems  rather  to  be  a  heritage  left  by  Synge  to 
the  playwrights  that  came  after  him.  But  whereas 
Synge's  criticism  of  life  is  merely  incidental,  the 
younger  playwrights  center  their  attention  upon 
it,  and,  while  in  the  plays  of  Synge  it  is  inherent 
in  either  character  or  plot,  in  those  of  the  younger 
group  the  plot  is  likely  to  be  somewhat  arbitrarily 
arranged  to  suit  the  motives  of  the  critic.  With 
Robinson's  plays,  however,  this  is  not  the  case. 
"The  Crossroads"  is  a  study  of  the  new  peasant 


THE  DRAMA  147 

woman  and  the  old  loveless  marriage.  Ellen  Mc- 
Carthy is  of  peasant  stock,  has  gone  to  Dublin,  and 
getting  a  position  as  servant,  has  risen  to  that  of 
saleslady  in  a  bookshop.  In  order  to  give  her 
sister  a  chance  in  Dublin,  she  returns  to  the  farm, 
where  she  tries  to  better  the  conditions  of  the 
rural  people  by  teaching  them,  through  her  own 
example,  methods  of  scientific  agriculture.  The 
mother  marries  her  off  to  Tom  Dempsey,  a  brutal, 
but  rich  farmer.  She  marries  him  in  order  to  be 
able  to  carry  her  public-spirited  work  to  a  further 
degree  of  efficiency,  but  he  abuses  her,  and  she 
rapidly  becomes  a  drudge.  Seven  years  later  the 
man  she  loves,  now  a  successful  writer,  visits  her. 
Her  husband  overhears  her  refusal  to  go  away 
with  the  man,  locks  her  in  the  room,  and  goes  to 
the  village  to  get  drunk,  promising  to  make  her 
"pay  for  this  night's  work."  She  has  failed  in 
her  work,  in  her  marriage,  and  in  her  life.  Her 
two  children  have  died,  and  she  herself  has  lost 
all  but  life.  The  curtain  falls  on  the  husband's 
threat.  "Harvest"  is  an  indictment  of  the  old 
education  that  prepared  the  peasant  for  a  position 
in  town  rather  than  for  the  rural  industry  to  which 
he  is  fitted.  Five  children  of  Timothy  Hurley 
have  been  educated  in  the  old  way,  and  at  the 


148  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

expense  of  the  farm  and  of  the  life  of  the  one 
brother  who  remains  to  work  it  with  the  father. 
All  of  them  are  useless  in  the  time  of  need  with 
the  exception  of  the  one  who  has  been  sacrificed, 
and  continues  to  be  sacrificed,  as  the  play  closes, 
to  the  superior  education  of  the  others.  "Har- 
vest" is  a  grim  little  tract,  in  its  problem  the  dra- 
matic complement  of  "The  Crossroads,"  a  record 
of  another  phase  of  the  most  important  economic 
problem  that  Ireland  is  facing  today.  "Pa- 
triots," on  the  other  hand,  is  a  trenchant  satire 
aimed  both  at  the  physical  force  party,  and  at  the 
comfortable  agitation  of  the  political  leagues  that 
take  their  patriotism  out  in  talk.  James  Nugent, 
a  political  criminal,  has  been  imprisoned  for  eight- 
een years,  and  returns  to  find  his  daughter  a 
cripple  because  of  his  early  campaigning,  and  his 
neighbors  and  friends  unwilling  to  listen  to  the 
talk  that  made  them  potential  revolutionists  after 
the  Parnell  case.  He  realizes  that  Ireland  is, 
after  all,  a  nation  of  "comfortable  shopkeepers," 
as  Yeats  has  said,  and  that  his  career  has  been  a 
failure  and  a  waste  of  life.  "Patriots"  is  the 
author's  best  made  play  in  the  theatrical  sense; 
it  is  more  conventional  than  either  "Harvest" 
or  "The  Crossroads,"  but  it  marks  an  advance  in 


THE  DRAMA  149 

dramatic  technique.  Like  the  other  two  plays, 
it  is  a  tragedy,  and  the  social  criticism  of  which  it 
is  the  vehicle  is  directed  toward  elements  that  are 
firmly  rooted  in  contemporary  Irish  life.  Further- 
more, it  grips  the  emotions  of  its  audiences  to  a 
far  greater  extent  than  either  of  the  other  two 
plays.  But  time,  which  made  life  a  tragedy  for 
James  Nugent,  has  disproved  Lennox  Robinson. 
The  Dublin  riots  of  April,  1916,  and  the  conse- 
quent proclamation  of  martial  law  throughout 
Ireland,  the  capture  and  arrest  of  Sir  Roger  Case- 
ment, himself  affiliated  with  the  Irish  revival, 
have  demonstrated  that  physical  force,  taken  up 
by  Sinn  Fein  and  the  Irish  volunteers,  is  even  now 
a  political  theory  that  official  Ireland  must  reckon 
with. 

"The  Dreamers"  is  an  historical  play,  the 
record  of  the  tragedy  of  the  Emmet  uprising  of 
'98 ;  it  is  effective  on  the  stage,  as  are  all  of  Robin- 
son's plays,  but  it  is  not  as  important  as  any  of  the 
others.  Lennox  Robinson  is  still  under  thirty;  he 
has  written  three  plays  as  great  in  their  way  as  are 
those  of  Synge  in  theirs.  Now  that  Padraic  Colum 
has  ceased  writing  for  the  theater,  he  is  the  most 
important  force  among  the  naturalistic  play- 
wrights who  are  writing  in  Ireland  today.    There  is 


I50  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

no  doubt  that  Synge  was  a  primary  influence  upon 
his  art,  just  as  Granville  Barker  has  been,  but 
these  influences  are  of  little  importance  in  the 
consideration  of  that  art  as  an  accomplished  prod- 
uct. He  too  is  a  regional  playwright — it  is  of  the 
southwest  that  he  writes — but  he  is  thoroughly 
representative  of  the  Ireland  of  today. 

The  influence  of  Synge  was  the  acknowledged 
and  impelling  motive  that  turned  the  thoughts  of 
"Rutherford  Mayne"  toward  the  theater.  An 
actor  himself,  he  has,  like  Lennox  Robinson,  exper- 
imented and  learned  his  craft  in  the  making  of  his 
plays.  He  has  written  four  plays,  three  of  them 
dealing  with  the  life  of  County  Down,  and  one 
with  the  peasantry  of  the  Galway  bogland.  The 
chief  qualities  of  his  art  are  the  novel  beauty  and 
surging  rhythm  of  his  diction,  the  fidelity  of  his 
plays  to  the  life  that  he  knows,  the  power  of  put- 
ting before  an  audience  characters  that  dominate 
its  consciousness.  There  is  present  also  in  his 
dramatic  writing  a  feeling  for  situation  and  for 
essential  drama,  although  "Rutherford  Mayne" 
does  not  write  in  the  vein  of  the  "well-made  play," 
but,  like  Granville  Barker,  seeks  to  create  an 
effect  of  extreme  naturalism  and  an  illusion  of  life 
conceived   not   in   terms   of   the   theater.      "The 


THE  DRAMA  151 

Drone"  (1908)  is  a  comedy  telling  the  story  of  a 
family  parasite,  a  sham  inventor  of  a  sham  bel- 
lows, who  saves  the  day  when  his  brother  is 
threatened  with  a  suit  for  breach  of  promise  by  a 
managing  spinster  in  search  of  a  husband  with 
money.  It  portrays  with  sardonic  humor  the 
avarice  of  the  dour  Scotch-Irish  farmer,  his  pride 
in  his  family,  his  unwillingness  to  be  beaten  in  a 
bargain.  "The  Turn  of  the  Road"  (1906)  shows 
the  tragedy  in  the  life  of  a  stern  Puritan  father 
whose  son  loves  more  than  all  else  in  life  the  violin 
and  its  music.  The  girl  that  he  loves  advises  him 
to  give  up  the  life  of  farmer  for  that  of  a  musician, 
and  the  father  turns  him  out  on  the  road  with  his 
curse,  only  realizing  later  that  the  city-folk  will 
never  appreciate  the  boy's  wild  music,  and  that  he 
might  have  made  him  a  happy  man  at  home. 
"The  Troth"  (1908),  is  likewise  tragedy.  A 
Protestant  and  a  Catholic  peasant  agree  to  lie 
in  wait  for  a  brutal  landlord  and  kill  him,  agreeing 
that  should  one  be  captured,  he  is  to  tell  nothing 
of  his  accomplice.  The  landlord  is  killed,  and  the 
Catholic,  who  has  lost  his  wife  through  the  land- 
lord's brutality,  is  captured.  But  the  Protestant 
has  been  the  murderer,  and  the  curtain  falls  as  he 
faces  the  horror  of  his  wife.    "Red  Turf"  (191 1), 


152  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

is  a  tale  of  a  land  feud  in  Galway.  The  husband  of 
a  nagging  wife  shoots  the  neighbor  and  his  son 
who  have,  by  the  decision  of  the  law,  stolen  the 
land  that  was  her  dowry.  He  does  it  not  because 
he  really  wishes  to,  but  because  he  knows  that 
his  wife  will  never  let  him  forget  the  grudge,  al- 
though, at  the  crucial  moment,  she  is  thoroughly 
frightened  and  tries  to  dissuade  him. 

What  little  philosophy  of  life  there  is  in  the 
plays  of  "Rutherford  Mayne"  is  not  conditioned 
by,  nor  implicit  in  the  plot  itself,  but  reaches  us  in 
the  comment  of  the  old  men  who  appear  in  the 
plays.  The  plots  themselves  are  not  firmly  in- 
tegrated nor  well  articulated,  but  in  every  instance 
the  characters  are  powerfully  realized,  and  the 
plays,  in  their  spare  and  direct  realism,  are  sin- 
gularly close  to  life. 

T.  C.  Murray  is  a  native  of  County  Cork,  the 
locale  of  his  two  plays,  "Birthright"  (1910),  and 
"Maurice  Harte"  (1912).  The  first  of  these  is  a 
grim  tragedy  of  the  jealousy  of  two  brothers,  the 
elder  of  whom  is  the  favorite  of  the  parish  because 
of  his  fine  personality  and  prowess  in  athletics. 
The  father,  in  a  burst  of  rage  at  finding  that  his 
son  has  gone  to  a  feast  to  celebrate  a  victory  at 
hurley,  disinherits  him,  and  plans  to  have  him 


THE  DRAMA  153 

emigrate.  The  younger  son,  more  purely  of 
peasant  stock,  like  the  father,  is  jealous  of  his 
brother,  who  taunts  him  with  having  plotted  to 
grab  the  land.  An  added  motive  is  his  envy  of  his 
mother's  love  for  her  eldest.  In  the  end  he  murders 
his  brother,  and  the  curtain  falls  on  the  mother's 
tragedy.  It  is  her  portrait,  so  finely  achieved,  so 
universal  in  its  appeal  to  the  emotions,  that  makes 
"Birthright,"  founded  on  a  plot  as  old  as  the 
story  of  Cain  and  Abel,  a  masterpiece  of  the 
modern  drama. 

"Maurice  Harte"  does  for  Catholic  Ireland  just 
what  the  plays  of  "Rutherford  Mayne"  and  St. 
John  Ervine  do  for  Protestant  Ireland.  Maurice  is 
being  educated  at  Maynooth  for  the  clergy,  but 
after  his  family  have  plunged  themselves  in  debt  to 
pay  his  tuition  he  discovers  that  he  has  no  voca- 
tion. They  persuade  him  to  continue  his  course  in 
order  that  his  brother  may  make  a  successful 
marriage.  He  returns  to  Maynooth,  passes  with 
the  highest  grade  at  his  examination,  and  is  about 
to  be  ordained,  when  the  shock  of  committing  this 
final  sacrilege  is  too  much  for  him,  and  he  loses  his 
reason.  The  tragedy  of  her  son's  madness  almost 
kills  the  mother,  and  the  family  find  themselves 
still  in  debt,  and  uncertain  whether  the  marriage 


154  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

can  be  accomplished  after  the  disgrace  has  become 
known. 

Patriarchal  rule,  the  tragedy  of  unrealized  fam- 
ily ambitions,  the  folly  that  makes  the  peasantry 
wish,  both  for  financial  and  religious  reasons,  to 
have  their  sons  become  priests;  these  are  the  themes 
employed  by  T.  C.  Murray.  He  is  not,  like  Lennox 
Robinson,  a  propagandist,  but  he  is  a  social  critic, 
although  there  is  no  word  of  criticism  in  his  plays. 
Their  power  lies  in  the  grim,  unrelieved  tragedy  of 
reality;  in  the  direct  expression  of  life  as  everyone 
knows  it,  and  since  no  audience  can  escape  from 
these  plays  without  sensing  this,  they  constitute 
the  most  important  social  criticism  as  well  as  the 
best  dramatic  art  that  the  Abbey  has  brought  forth 
since  the  days  of  Synge.  T.  C.  Murray  has  in 
two  plays  attained  the  highest  level  reached  by 
the  realists;  of  less  accomplishment  in  quantity 
than  Lennox  Robinson,  he  is  of  greater  in  quality. 

St.  John  Greer  Ervine  is  the  author  of  six  plays 
and  of  two  novels.  He  is  a  native  of  Belfast,  and 
the  greater  part  of  his  work  is  concerned  with  the 
life  of  the  workingmen  in  that  city  and  in  the  sur- 
rounding country.  "Mixed  Marriage"  (191 1), 
is  a  study  of  religious  intolerance  among  the 
artisans  of  Belfast.     John  Rainey,  a  Protestant, 


THE  DRAMA  155 

has  forgotten  his  religious  prejudice  during  a 
strike  in  which  laborers  of  both  faiths  are  working 
together  to  ameliorate  their  condition  and  makes 
speeches  advocating  the  cessation  of  religious  strife. 
His  son  Hugh,  who  is  more  tolerant,  is  in  love 
with  a  Catholic  girl,  and  friendly  with  the  Catholic 
labor  agitator.  The  father,  discovering  that  Hugh 
is  to  marry  Nora,  drives  both  away  from  home,  and 
turns  his  speeches  to  denunciation  of  the  Catholics, 
bringing  about  a  riot,  during  which  Nora  is  shot  by 
the  soldiers.  The  characterization  of  the  stern, 
Puritanical  father,  the  sensible  and  humorous 
mother,  and  the  lovers  is  exceedingly  well  done, 
and  the  play  is  exceptionally  successful  as  a  purely 
objective  study  of  the  feelings  of  Ulster.  In  the 
same  vein,  but  slighter  in  its  dramatic  material,  is 
"The  Orangeman"  (1914),  which  tells  how  Tom 
M'Clurg  refuses  to  beat  the  drum  that  his  father 
has  beaten  on  every  anniversary  of  the  Battle  of 
the  Boyne  since  the  first  Home  Rule  Bill  was 
brought  in  by  Gladstone.  The  father,  who  is  a 
religious  bigot,  cannot  go  to  the  celebration  be- 
cause of  a  rheumatic  attack,  and  the  son,  furious 
at  his  bullying,  puts  his  foot  through  the  drum. 
"The  Magnanimous  Lover"  (191 2),  is  an  ex- 
cellent acting  play  in  one  act  the  first  performance 


156  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

of  which  caused  a  riot  in  the  Abbey  akin  to  that 
caused  by  "The  Playboy,"  Dublin  audiences  feel- 
ing that  the  word  "bastard"  was  a  reflection  upon 
Irish  morality.  Maggie  Gather  has  been  betrayed 
and  become  the  mother  of  a  child  by  Henry  Hinde. 
He  has  left  Ireland  just  before  the  birth  of  the 
baby,  refusing  to  marry  Maggie  because  she  is  no 
longer  a  "good  woman."  Ten  years  later,  having 
prospered  in  Liverpool  until  it  is  possible  for  him 
to  marry  a  minister's  daughter,  he  is  conscience- 
stricken,  and  although  he  no  longer  loves  or 
respects  Maggie,  returns  to  ask  her  hand  in  mar- 
riage. She,  knowing  his  feelings,  refuses  to  let  him 
be  "saved"  from  the  consequences  of  his  own  sin 
by  marrying  her.  The  play  is  a  splendid  study  of 
life  and  of  emotion,  and  is  exceptionally  effective 
on  the  stage.  "The  Critics"  (1913),  is  a  slight 
dialogue  poking  fun  at  the  various  Dublin  re- 
viewers who  wrote  accounts  of  the  "immorality" 
of  "The  Magnanimous  Lover."  It  is  done  quite  in 
the  spirit  of  Moliere's  little  play  of  criticism,  "Le 
Critique  de  I'Ecole  des  Femmes." 

In  "Jane  Clegg"  (19 14),  the  playwright  has 
turned  his  attention  to  England.  Henry  Clegg  is  a 
weak  and  irresponsible  character,  a  liar,  and  has 
been  unfaithful  to  his  wife.    He  is  hard  pressed  for 


THE  DRAMA  157 

money,  for  a  cause  that  he  does  not  care  to  reveal, 
and  she  refuses  to  give  him  the  little  she  has  in- 
herited. He  defaults  with  a  check  belonging  to  the 
firm  for  which  he  is  a  travelling  salesman,  and  when 
the  deficit  is  discovered  appeals  to  his  wife.  She 
pays  the  debt  in  order  to  save  the  reputation  of  his 
children,  but  discovers  that  he  has  used  the  money 
to  save  his  mistress,  who  is  about  to  give  birth  to  a 
child,  and  with  whom  he  planned  to  elope  to 
Canada  on  the  following  morning;  and  tells  him  to 
go.  And  thus  he  leaves  her.  As  in  the  other  plays, 
the  chief  quality  upon  which  "Jane  Clegg"  de- 
pends is  the  excellence  of  its  characterization. 
It  is,  however,  from  the  point  of  view  of  dramatic 
construction,  the  best  of  the  six  plays.  The  plot  is 
well  articulated,  and  the  situations  developed 
forcefully,  and  as  a  record  of  life  it  is  convincingly 
real  and  true.  In  his  latest  play,  "John  Fergu- 
son" (191 5),  St.  John  Ervine  has  returned  to  Ire- 
land and  placed  his  scene  in  County  Down.  It 
relates  how  the  mortgage  on  John  Ferguson's  farm 
is  to  be  foreclosed  by  Henry  Witherow,  how 
Witherow  and  Jimmy  Ceasar  each  wish  to  marry 
Hannah  Ferguson  and  redeem  the  mortgage,  and 
how  Hannah  is  betrothed  to  Jimmy,  whom  she 
does  not  love.     Then,  deciding  that  she  cannot 


IS8  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

marry  him,  she  goes  to  Witherow  to  tell  him  to 
foreclose.  He  wrongs  her,  and  is  killed  by  her 
brother  Andrew,  who  gives  himself  up  to  the 
police,  and  then,  after  all  the  tragedy,  a  check 
arrives  from  the  uncle  in  America  to  whom  the 
family  had  applied  for  money. 

St.  John  Ervine,  like  most  of  the  younger  group 
of  Irish  playwrights,  is  a  realist,  interested  in  the 
prosaic  and  matter  of  fact  life  that  he  knows  so 
well,  and  giving  in  his  plays  a  careful  transcript 
from  it.  He  has  great  power  of  dialogue,  and  an 
ambient  humor  which  appears  to  a  greater  extent 
in  his  novels  than  in  his  plays.  He  is  an  expert 
technician,  and  a  creator  of  characters  that  seem 
to  possess  their  own  lives,  of  which  his  plays  but 
give  a  glimpse.  And  in  the  final  analysis,  his  plays, 
like  those  of  T.  C.  Murray,  are  the  product  of  a 
close  observation  and  mature  reflection  about  life. 

Seumas  O'Kelly  is  a  playwright  quite  in  the 
tradition  exemplified  by  the  plays  of  Robinson, 
Murray,  Mayne,  and  Ervine.  He  is  the  author 
of  two  plays,  "The  Shuiler's  Child"  (1909),  which 
shows  the  influence  of  both  Synge  and  the  younger 
reaHsts,  and  "The  Bribe"  (191 3),  a  study  of  local 
politics  which,  like  "Patriots,"  was  perhaps  in- 
fluenced by  "The  Bending  of  the  Bough." 


THE  DRAMA  1 59 

"The  Shuiler's  Child"  exhibits  traces  of  Synge's 
choice  of  material  in  the  character  of  Moll  Woods, 
the  "shuiler"  or  woman  of  the  roads.  She  has 
become  a  vagrant  because  of  a  term  served  in 
gaol,  and  her  child  she  has  left  In  the  workhouse. 
There  Nannie  O'Hea,  the  wife  of  a  prosperous 
farmer,  and  childless,  has  seen  him  and  adopted 
him.  The  Lady  Inspector  has  a  quarrel  with  the 
foster  mother,  and  recommends  that  the  child  be 
taken  away.  But  the  life  of  Nannie  Is  centered 
in  that  of  Phil,  the  child.  Moll  returns  to  the 
workhouse,  claims  the  child,  to  whom  she  has  a 
legal  right,  and  returns  him  to  Nannie,  realizing 
that  he  is  not  strong  enough  to  endure  the  life  of 
the  roads.  As  she  is  leaving  Nannie's  home,  as- 
sured of  a  position  on  a  farm  near  the  child  and 
an  opportunity  to  redeem  herself  In  the  eyes  of 
society,  she  learns  that  the  police  have  a  warrant 
for  her  arrest  on  an  old  charge.  To  save  the 
reputation  of  the  child,  she  gives  herself  up, 
knowing  that  another  term  in  gaol  Is  her  final 
downfall. 

"The  Bribe"  concerns  a  heavily  contested  elec- 
tion for  the  position  of  dispensary  doctor  in  a 
small  local  division.  The  two  young  doctors  are 
Luke  Diamond,  the  son  of  a  poor  woman  who  has 


l6o  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

spent  her  little  savings  on  his  education,  and  who 
has  taken  all  the  honors  at  college,  and  Power 
O'Connor,  the  son  of  the  retiring  physician,  who 
is  a  profligate  and  degenerate.  John  Kirwan,  the 
chairman  of  the  Board  of  Guardians,  has  prom- 
ised to  hold  aloof  at  the  election,  but  discovers 
that  he  is  hopelessly  in  debt  to  the  best  friend  of 
O'Connor's  father,  who  is  pressing  him  for  imme- 
diate payment.  He  therefore  accepts  a  bribe 
from  old  Doctor  O'Connor,  and  decides  the  elec- 
tion, against  his  own  conscience,  for  young  O'Con- 
nor. Luke  Diamond  and  his  mother  are  ruined, 
but  although  they  feel  that  Kirwan  has  been 
bribed,  as  they  know  that  other  councillors  have 
been,  his  reputation  for  honesty  is  so  great  that 
they  do  not  dare  attack  him.  Luke  therefore 
decides  to  emigrate  to  Australia.  Kirwan's  wife 
is  about  to  give  birth  to  a  child,  and  Dr.  O'Connor 
has  charge  of  the  case.  He  is  incompetent,  how- 
ever, and  things  go  wrong,  and  finally,  he  is  forced 
to  call  Luke  in  to  save  Mrs.  Kirwan.  Before 
Luke  arrives  the  patient  becomes  worse,  and  when 
he  does  arrive,  although  he  is  a  specialist  in  such 
cases,  he  can  do  nothing,  and  Mrs.  Kirwan  and  the 
child  die.  Such  is  the  retribution  allotted  to 
Kirwan  by  the  dramatist. 


THE  DRAMA  l6l 

O'Kelly's  plays  both  show  the  social  criticism 
and  the  pessimism  characteristic  of  the  younger 
Irish  dramatists.  The  criticism  in  this  instance 
is  directed  toward  the  corruption  of  political  life 
in  Ireland,  and  toward  the  law,  which  ruins  the 
life  of  a  woman  through  no  fault  of  her  own.  The 
pessimism  in  both  plays  is,  like  that  of  Padraic 
Colum  in  "Thomas  Muskerry,"  a  view  of  the 
utter  futility  of  life  in  the  smaller  country  towns. 
But  the  power  of  the  plays  is  hindered  by  a  ten- 
dency toward  talkiness  that  obscures  the  progress 
of  the  action.  Unlike  T.  C.  Murray,  Seumas 
O'Kelly  does  not  employ  the  singularly  spare 
directness  of  speech  which  the  realistic  drama- 
tists find  so  effective  an  agent  in  influencing  the 
emotions  of  an  audience.  The  underlying  ideas 
of  both  plays  are  trenchant  and  essentially  dra- 
matic, but  the  art  of  the  playwright  is  deficient 
in  technical  ability. 

William  Boyle  has  written  four  plays  of  life  in 
Galway:  "The  Building  Fund"  (1905),  "The 
Eloquent  Dempsey"  (1906),  "Family  Failings" 
(1912)  and  "The  Mineral  Workers"  (1906).  All 
are  in  a  comic  vein,  and  one  at  least,  "The  Build- 
ing Fund"  has  been  one  of  the  most  successful 
productions  made  by  the  Abbey.     It  tells  how  a 


l62  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

miserly  son  and  a  sly  granddaughter  are  disin- 
herited and  disappointed  by  a  shrewd  old  peasant 
woman  who  leaves  her  fortune  and  farm  to  the 
building  fund  of  the  parish  church.  The  plot  is 
slight,  and  the  play  depends,  for  its  success,  upon 
a  wealth  of  characterization  and  capable  acting. 
The  audience,  feeling  little  or  no  sympathy  for 
any  of  the  characters,  views  it  in  a  wholly  im- 
personal mood,  and  therefore  is  amused  by  the 
trickiness  which  results  in  a  certain  measure  of 
tragedy.  The  other  three  plays  are  equally  slight 
in  content  and  contain  little  evidence  that  the 
author  has  attempted  a  serious  interpretation  of 
Irish  life.  His  plays  attain  a  comfortable  medi- 
ocrity and  some  success  in  the  theater,  but  as  a 
contribution  to  dramatic  literature  they  are  mani- 
festly unimportant. 

"Norreys  Connell"  (Conal  O'Riordan)  became 
a  director  of  the  Abbey  in  1909,  succeeding  J.  M. 
Synge.  He  had  already  contributed  a  play, 
"The  Piper"  (1908),  to  the  repertory  of  the  com- 
pany, and  he  followed  it  with  two  others,  "Time" 
(1909)  and  "An  Imaginary  Conversation"  (1909). 
He  has  written  two  other  plays,  both  as  yet  un- 
produced,  "Shakespeare's  End"  (1912)  and  "Rope 
Enough"  (1914).     The  first  of  his  plays  is  a  bitter 


THE  DRAMA  163 

satire  of  contemporary  Irish  political  life  and 
feeling  thinly  veiled  under  the  guise  of  an  incident 
of  the  rebellion  of  '98.  It  provoked  a  riot  similar 
to  that  occasioned  by  "The  Playboy"  and  "The 
Magnanimous  Lover"  at  its  first  performance. 
In  its  denunciation  of  the  evils  of  all  the  various 
political  parties,  of  the  lack  of  cohesion  obtaining 
among  the  various  groups  of  people  professedly 
striving  toward  the  same  end,  of  the  lack  of  effi- 
cient action  and  plenitude  of  inconsequential 
oratory,  of  the  fundamental  impracticality  of  the 
Irish,  it  contains  social  criticism  of  a  peculiarly 
trenchant  quality.  "Time,"  a  little  morality 
play,  and  "An  Imaginary  Conversation,"  a  dia- 
logue between  Robert  Emmet,  Tom  Moore,  and 
his  sister,  are  not  of  great  importance.  "Shake- 
speare's End"  is  likewise  slight  in  conception  and 
in  execution.  "Rope  Enough"  is  a  society  com- 
edy of  English  aristocratic  life  done  In  the  manner 
of  Wilde,  and  betraying,  in  part,  the  influence  of 
Bernard  Shaw  and  of  Granville  Barker.  It 
points  the  rather  obvious  moral  that  if  a  man  is 
given  "rope  enough"  he  will  surely  hang  himself. 
In  the  fashioning  of  the  dialogue  "Norreys  Con- 
nell"  has  followed  the  method,  instituted  by 
Granville   Barker,   of    conveying   the   Illusion   of 


l64  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

real  life  by  reproducing  conversation  that  appar- 
ently does  not  foster  the  progress  of  the  plot,  but 
merely  emphasizes  the  atmosphere  of  life.  This 
dialogue,  as  it  is  to  be  found  in  "Rope  Enough" 
and  in  the  plays  of  Barker,  bears  no  resemblance 
to  the  badly  constructed  dialogue  that  mars  the 
art  of  "The  Shuiler's  Child";  it  involves  a  difficult 
process  of  selection,  and  is  done  with  deliberate 
intention,  and  marks,  in  its  effort  to  reproduce 
natural  in  distinction  to  dramatic  speech,  a  new 
theory  of  the  theater. 

George  Fitzmaurice  has  written  five  plays: 
"  The  Country  Dressmaker  "  (1907),  "The  Moon- 
lighter," "The  Piedish"  (1908),  "The  Magic 
Glasses"  and  "The  Dandy  Dolls,"  all  of  which 
deal  with  life  in  Kerry.  Four  are  comedies, 
while  "The  Moonlighter"  tells  of  the  tragedy 
of  a  rising  in  the  eighties  of  the  last  century. 
"The  Piedish"  is  the  brief  scene  of  the  death  of  an 
old  impenitent  who  hoped  to  cheat  both  death 
and  his  family  by  living  to  finish  a  piedish  that  he 
had  been  modelling  in  putty.  "The  Dandy 
Dolls"  and  "The  Magic  Glasses"  both  introduce 
the  supernatural  and  grotesque.  But  "The  Coun- 
try Dressmaker"  is  a  comedy  of  actual  life,  dealing, 
for  the  most  part,  with  matchmaking.     In  this  one 


THE  DRAMA  165 

play  alone  are  the  characters  strongly  realized  and 
the  action  developed  logically.  All  five  plays  are 
marred  by  a  certain  verbosity  that  accomplishes 
little  either  in  furthering  the  action  or  in  limning 
the  characters.  The  dialect  in  these  plays  shows 
the  influence  of  Synge,  but  it  wholly  lacks  the 
rhythm  and  cadence  and  beauty  of  color  that 
raised  the  peasant  dialect  as  Synge  employed  it 
to  the  level  of  poetic  expression. 

Johanna  Redmond,  Lewis  Purcell,  and  Terence 
MacSwiney  have  each  one  play  to  their  credit. 
Miss  Redmond's  "Falsely  True"  (1911)  is  a  lurid 
little  melodrama  of  the  rising  of  1803,  in  which  a 
mother  is  forced  to  listen  to  her  son's  confession 
that  he  has  turned  informer  in  order  to  save  his 
brother.  Lewis  Purcell's  "The  Pagan"  (1909)  is 
a  little  comedy  of  love  and  elopement  in  Ulster  in 
the  sixth  century,  not  without  its  satire  upon 
twentieth  century  Ireland.  Terence  MacSwiney's 
"The  Revolutionist"  (1914)  was  written  with 
the  idea  of  injecting  a  little  more  technical  skill 
into  the  contemporary  Irish  drama,  and  in  order 
to  illustrate  the  claims  of  the  intellectual  as  against 
the  imaginative  drama.  It  portrays  the  tragedy 
of  the  political  reformer  who  sets  his  ideals  before 
aught  else  in  the  scale  of  values.     The  play  is  well 


i66  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

written,  the  dialogue  direct  and  forceful,  and  thd 
characters  well  drawn.  To  a  great  degree  it  is  a 
vehicle  for  the  social  criticism  of  its  author.  An 
earlier  tragedy  having  political  reform  as  its  sub- 
ject is  "When  the  Dawn  Is  Come,"  by  the  late 
Thomas  MacDonagh,  one  of  the  younger  genera- 
tion of  poets  and  critics,  which  was  produced  at 
the  Abbey  in  1908.  It  deals  with  the  revolution 
in  Ireland  in  the  coming  days,  and  shows  the 
tragedy  that  befell  the  leader  because  he  dealt 
with  the  enemy  in  a  fashion  that  resembled  trea- 
son, but  which  effectually  won  his  cause.  In  plot, 
the  play  is  identical  with  Verhaeren's  "Les  Aubes" 
which  the  author  had  never  read.  It  is  written 
in  poetic  prose,  but  fails  to  attain  true  dramatic 
speech.  Because  of  its  patriotic  qualities  it 
scored  some  success.  It  seems,  however,  that 
the  play  was  not  without  some  prophecy  of  truth. 
As  the  present  lines  are  being  written  ^  news  has 
come  to  America  telling  of  the  capitulation  of  the 
Provisional  Government  of  the  Republic  of  Ire- 
land. One  of  the  Commissioners  of  that  govern- 
ment, and  a  leader  in  the  revolt,  was  Thomas 
MacDonagh. 

^May  1st,  1916.    See  the  "New  York  Times"  for  text  of 
the  Proclamation,  published  in  the  issue  of  that  date. 


THE  DRAMA  167 

Joseph  Campbell  (Seosamh  MacCathmhaoil) 
known  also  as  an  illustrator  and  the  writer  of  some 
very  beautiful  poems  and  prose  sketches  of  life  in 
Donegal,  has  written  one  play.  "Judgment" 
(191 2)  is  a  record  of  life  in  Donegal,  a  play  which, 
in  its  grim  tragedy  and  wild  beauty  is  reminiscent 
of  Synge.  It  concerns  Peg  Straw,  a  demented  old 
wanderer  who  has  been  turned  away  from  the 
house  of  a  peasant  woman  expecting  the  birth  of 
her  first  child.  The  action  takes  place  in  the 
house  from  which  she  has  been  turned  away.  She 
is  beaten  by  the  tinkers  a  little  way  from  the 
house,  and  the  audience  hears  the  cries  of  her 
suffering.  Finally  she  returns  to  die  in  the  cabin, 
so  thoroughly  frightening  the  wife  that  her  child 
is  born  prematurely.  During  the  wake  held  for 
Peg  a  stranger  enters  the  house,  bringing  with 
him  the  atmosphere  of  the  wild  night  on  the  roads 
outside.  He  quarrels  with  all  there,  and  finally, 
as  an  old  man  is  telling  that  Peg  had  lost  her  mind 
because  she  had  murdered  her  baby,  the  stranger 
proclaims  himself  the  child  whom  she  had  thought 
to  drown,  and  is  turned  out  of  the  house  in  which 
his  mother  lies  dead  and  unburied.  The  quality 
of  this  play  is  as  instinctively  poetic  as  that  of 
"Riders  to  the  Sea";  it  possesses  the  same  sense 


l68  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

of  remoteness  from  the  ordinary  life  that  we  know, 
the  same  tragic  fate  produced  by  the  circum- 
stances of  a  wild  and  primitive  life,  the  same 
beauty  of  speech  and  heightened  imagination  as 
characteristic  of  the  people  who  live  that  life. 

The  dramatic  movement  in  Ireland  has  under- 
gone a  curious  change  during  the  sixteen  years 
that  have  elapsed  since  its  inception.  It  began  as 
an  attempt  to  produce  literary  plays;  it  brought 
forth  poetic  tragedy,  "intellectual"  drama,  and 
realistic  satire  of  contemporary  life.  Then,  with 
Yeats  as  the  dominating  spirit,  it  was  hoped  that  a 
school  of  writers  having  at  their  command  the 
resources  of  a  beautiful  language,  would  arise  and 
create  a  folk-drama,  and  poetic  plays  founded  upon 
legendary  lore.  With  the  coming  of  J.  M.  Synge 
the  dominant  influence  suffered  a  change.  Realism 
took  the  place  of  romance;  the  wild,  primitive,  ele- 
mental nature  of  the  peasant  became  the  chief  in- 
terest, and  the  peasant  conceived  in  terms  of  spirit- 
uality and  mystical  belief  and  living  wholly  in  a 
world  of  dreams,  was  lost  sight  of  in  the  ensuing  re- 
action against  the  theories  of  Yeats.  In  the  plays  of 
Synge  the  romantic  and  the  realistic  conceptions  of 
life  met  in  their  fullest  development.  They  in- 
fluenced the  subsequent  work  of  Yeats  himself, 


THE  DRAMA  169 

bringing  him  to  deal  less  and  less  with  the  worid  of 
the  imagination,  unburdening  his  work  of  its 
"dream-drenched  will,"  and  bringing  it  into  closer 
touch  with  life.  What  they  have  done  for  the 
younger  generation  of  playwrights  is  obvious  to  the 
reader  acquainted  with  the  work  of  Robinson, 
Murray,  Mayne,  and  even  that  of  Padraic  Colum. 
The  newer  playwrights  have  concentrated  their 
attention  upon  the  life  of  today,  whether  that  of 
the  peasantry,  the  townsmen  or  the  official  classes. 
The  tradition  of  "Celticism"  has  almost  wholly 
disappeared  from  contemporary  Irish  drama.  It 
may  be  questioned  whether  the  fate-burdened 
tragic  peasant  of  the  plays  of  today  is  more  truth- 
ful to  the  life  of  Ireland  as  it  is  actually  being  lived 
than  was  the  "stage  Irishman"  of  Boucicault  and 
his  school,  or  the  visionary  dreamer  of  the  earlier 
work  of  Yeats  and  of  A.  E.  Almost  the  only  fol- 
lowers of  Yeats  of  any  importance  have  been  Lady 
Gregory,  whose  historical  plays  are  not  especially 
valuable  as  literature,  nor  especially  powerful  as 
drama,  and  William  Sharp,  whose  plays  remain 
unproduced.  The  younger  school  refuses  to  find 
consolation  and  refuge  either  in  its  dreams  or  in  an 
heroic  past.  They  are  concerned  with  the  prob- 
lems of  today  in  an  effort  to  influence  the  life  of  to- 


I70  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

morrow.  They  produce  social  criticism  in  order  to 
enforce  the  changes  which  they  desire  Ireland  to 
undergo;  if  they  are  extreme  in  their  satire  and 
pessimistic  in  their  tragic  conception  of  life,  it  is 
because  propaganda  must  necessarily  enforce  its 
point  by  exaggerating  and  emphasizing  conditions. 
Their  propaganda,  however,  is  not  one  of  art,  but 
of  actual  experience.  What  these  newer  play- 
wrights have  done  is  to  turn  from  art  to  life,  and 
by  doing  so  they  have  laid  the  foundations  of  their 
art  upon  a  firmer  soil. 

In  expression  the  newer  dramatists  have  fol- 
lowed the  innovation  begun  by  Dr.  Hyde,  con- 
tinued by  Lady  Gregory,  and  for  the  first  time  em- 
ployed in  the  drama  by  J.  M.  Synge.  In  doing  so 
they  have  fulfilled  at  least  one  of  the  visions  of 
Yeats,  who  above  all  desired  a  folk-theater.  The 
Abbey  is  essentially  a  folk-theater  in  that  the 
greater  number  of  plays  produced  there  deal  with 
the  life  of  the  peasantry.  Folk-imagination  and 
folk-poetry  are  qualities  inherent  in  many  of  these 
plays,  only,  however,  when  they  are  implicit  in  the 
essential  drama,  and  never  gratuitously  applied,  as 
they  threatened  to  become  in  the  work  of  Yeats. 

The  acting  of  the  Abbey  company  is  marked  by 
the  same  simplicity  of  expression,  the  same  econ- 


THE  DRAMA  171 

omy  of  means,  the  same  dignity  of  feeling  as  that 
which  characterizes  the  plays  which  they  enact. 
There  is  very  little  "stage-business"  in  the  com- 
monly accepted  theatrical  sense  of  the  phrase. 
The  actors  and  actresses  have  studied  peasant  life 
thoroughly,  and  they  recreate  it  with  exact  and 
painstaking  realism.  Their  chief  reliance  is  laid 
upon  beauty  and  expression  in  diction,  and  they 
have  learned  from  the  French  theater  how  it  is 
possible  to  convey  character  in  voice,  gesture,  and 
appearance,  with  the  minimum  of  action.  Produc- 
tions at  the  Abbey  are  also  exceptionally  simple, 
although  in  the  case  of  the  poetic  drama  an  at- 
tempt has  been  made  to  convey  the  atmosphere 
and  mood  of  the  play  by  means  of  the  new  meth- 
ods of  suggestive  stagecraft.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  these  results  in  acting,  producing,  and 
even  in  the  character  of  the  plays  themselves  have 
been  as  greatly  enforced  by  external  conditions  as 
they  have  been  consciously  sought  for.  The  Ab- 
bey itself  is  a  small  theater;  the  company  that 
originally  occupied  it  was  composed  chiefly  of  men 
and  women  without  previous  stage  experience,  and 
the  training  in  acting  that  they  have  had  has  led 
them  in  an  opposite  direction  from  the  profes- 
sional stage  as  it  has  been  in  England  and  in  the 


172  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

United  States.  But  the  Abbey  has  had  a  great 
deal  of  influence,  not  only  in  Ireland  and  in  Eng- 
land, but  in  the  United  States,  where  the  recent 
creation  of  "little  theaters"  has  been  principally 
encouraged  by  its  example. 

Its  greatest  importance  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  has 
given  artistic  expression  to  the  race  consciousness, 
and  that  it  has  been  productive  of  a  new  and 
powerful  dramatic  literature.  For  the  Abbey 
playwrights  are  doing  the  most  noteworthy  work 
that  is  being  done  for  the  English  speaking  stage 
today. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE 

THE  novel  has  been  the  one  literary  form  in 
the  manipulation  of  which  Irish  writers 
have  been  conspicuously  deficient.  The  plays  of 
Synge  are  sufficiently  great  in  dramatic  achieve- 
ment to  bear  comparison  with  the  work  of  any  of 
the  contemporary  Continental  dramatists;  the 
dramatic  poems  of  William  Butler  Yeats  are  nearly 
if  not  quite  the  equals  of  those  of  Maeterlinck, 
and  his  lyric  verse  and  the  poetry  of  A.  E.  is  of  as 
high  an  order  as  that  written  anywhere  in  the  last 
twenty-five  years.  But  if  we  look  for  a  single  Irish 
novelist  the  quality  of  whose  work  assures  him  of  a 
parity  of  stature  with  any  of  these,  the  search  is 
likely  to  end  in  failure.  This  is  all  the  more  re- 
markable since,  at  the  outset  of  the  Romantic 
Revival,  it  was  an  Irish  novelist,  Maria  Edge- 
worth,  who  taught  English  writers  to  find  a  social 
as  well  as  an  artistic  interest  in  peasant  life,  and 
who  first  brought  the  humanitarian  motive,  des- 
tined in  the  Victorian  period  to  occupy  the  chief 

173 


174  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

attention  of  English  writers,  into  English  fiction. 
A  little  later  the  works  of  Charles  Lever,  of  Samuel 
Lover,  and  of  William  Carleton  attained  popular- 
ity, though  none  of  the  three  were  essentially 
significant  authors.  Carleton,  who  knew  Gaelic, 
might  possibly  have  inaugurated  an  earlier  renas- 
cence of  interest  in  the  Irish,  had  he  not  been  too 
covetous  of  popularity,  and  written  of  Ireland 
purely  for  English  readers  during  the  greater  part 
of  his  career.  From  the  time  of  Carleton  until  the 
late  eighties  of  the  last  century  no  Irish  novelist  of 
even  passing  note  appeared  upon  the  horizon. 

It  was  in  1886  that  George  Moore  published 
"A  Drama  in  Muslin,"  following  it  in  the  next 
year  with  ''Parnell  and  his  Island."  He  had  spent 
his  boyhood  at  Moore  Hall,  the  family  estate  in 
Mayo,  which,  upon  the  death  of  his  father,  he 
inherited.  It  is  his  own  confession  that  Ireland  had 
little  appeal  for  him  in  his  youth,  and,  after  study- 
ing at  Oscott  College,  he  went  to  London  to  learn 
the  art  of  painting.  At  twenty-one  he  migrated  to 
Paris,  enrolling  at  the  Academic  Julian,  but  soon 
discovered  that  painting  was  not  his  art.  He 
wrote  a  little  volume  of  erotic  verse  which  un- 
fortunately has  disappeared  from  public  view. 
Just  as  he  had  come  in  contact  with  most  impor- 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE     1 75 

tant  movements  in  English  art  while  studying  in 
London,  and  had  known  Whistler  and  the  Pre- 
raphaelites,  so  in  Paris  he  came  to  know  intimately 
the  artists  who  were  soon  to  become  famous  as  the 
Impressionist  school.  This  acquaintance,  and 
Moore's  own  study  of  art  enabled  him,  in  1893,  to 
write  "Modern  Painting"  which,  although  the 
verdict  of  time  has  in  some  instances  not  borne  out 
his  judgment,  was  the  first  adequate  discussion  of 
the  esthetics  of  modern  art  to  be  written  in  Eng- 
land. After  ten  years  of  life  in  Paris,  reverses  in 
fortune  compelled  him  to  return  to  England,  where 
he  began  his  career  as  a  writer.  In  1883  he  wrote 
"A  Modern  Lover,"  and  in  the  following  year, 
*'A  Mummer's  Wife."  Then  came  the  two  books 
first  mentioned,  and  in  rapid  succession  "Spring 
Days,"  "Impressions  and  Opinions,"  a  volume  of 
criticism  published  in  1891,  "Modern  Painting," 
his  two  early  experiments  with  the  drama,  "The 
Strike  at  Arlingford"  (1893)  and  "Journeys  End 
in  Lovers  Meeting"  (1894),  ^^^  "Esther  Waters," 
published  in  1894. 

In  1898,  with  the  publication  of  "Evelyn  Innes," 
he  had  evidenced  an  interest  in  the  Irish  revival, 
which,  with  the  outbreak  of  the  Boer  War,  sent 
him  to  Ireland  in   1899,  where  he   remained  for 


176  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

eleven  years.  During  his  residence  there  he  wrote 
the  plays  which  have  been  discussed  in  another 
chapter,  and  seven  books.  These  were  "Sister 
Teresa,"  a  sequel  to  "Evelyn  Innes,"  published  in 
1901;  "The  Untilled  Field,"  a  collection  of  stories 
of  varying  length,  in  1903;  "The  Lake"  in  1905, 
"Memoirs  of  My  Dead  Life"  in  1906;  and  three 
volumes  of  "Hail  and  Farewell"  "Ave,"  (191 1), 
"Salve"  (1912)  and  "Vale"  (1914),  the  first  of 
which  was  published  in  191 1  just  after  his  de- 
parture from  Dublin.  The  Celtic  episode  of  his 
career  closed  with  the  publication  of  "Hail  and 
Farewell,"  and  he  has  returned  to  life  in  London. 

The  foundations  of  his  art  were  laid  during  his 
ten  years  of  residence  in  Paris;  it  is  usually  un- 
profitable to  trace  literary  influences,  but  in  the 
case  of  George  Moore  the  influences  are  so  thor- 
oughly patent  that  they  seem  to  form  the  basis  of 
his  art.  Above  all  others,  if  we  wish  to  arrive  at 
the  fundamental  experiences  out  of  which  he 
writes,  we  must  place  his  own  life.  That  it  has 
been  full  and  varied,  that  his  contact  has  been 
wide  and  his  appreciations  versatile  beyond  that 
of  any  other  contemporary  author  must  be  evident 
to  every  reader  of  his  novels.  In  Paris  he  served 
his  apprenticeship  to  all  the  arts;  he  returned  to 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    i  ^y 

London  a  critic  possessing  a  background  of  culture 
that  was  anything  but  superficial,  a  cosmopolitan 
in  his  interests,  a  novelist  who  had  modelled  his 
conception  of  his  art  upon  that  of  Zola. 

He  is  rarely  a  subjective  realist,  and  although  he 
has  analysed  himself  frequently  in  his  writing,  the 
analysis  in  each  case  is  as  clearly  objective  as  is 
that  of  the  characters  between  whose  temperament 
and  his  there  exists  the  widest  possible  divergence. 
Apart  from  this,  his  art  is  almost  entirely  imper- 
sonal; almost,  but  not  quite  entirely,  for  the  re- 
curring theme  of  revolt  against  the  conventionally 
accepted  code  of  morality  is  an  expression  of  one 
of  the  dominant  motives  of  his  view  of  life.  But 
if  he  has  not  unduly  obtruded  his  own  personality 
in  his  art,  he  has  at  least  revealed  therein  his 
interests,  and  the  personalities  of  those  people  who 
have  attracted  him  most  among  his  acquaintances. 
"Hail  and  Farewell"  is  the  example  that  most 
readily  comes  to  mind,  but  there  are  others.  In 
the  first  version  of  "Evelyn  Innes,"  the  character 
of  Ulick  Dean  is  clearly  a  portrait  of  Yeats,  and  in 
the  second  version,  the  portrait  is  a  composite  of 
Yeats  and  of  A.  E.  In  the  same  novel  Mr.  Innes  is 
Arnold  Dolmetsch,  and  for  the  characters  of  Mgr. 
Mostyn  and  of  Sir  Owen  Asher,  the  author  drew 


178  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

upon  certain  of  the  qualities  of  mind  of  Edward 
Martyn  and  of  himself.  Dick  Lennox,  in  "A 
Mummer's  Wife,"  is,  as  the  author  tells  us,  a 
portrait  of  Dick  Maitland,  an  acquaintance  of  the 
seventies  in  London,  while  Esther  Waters  was 
modelled  upon  his  charwoman  in  Victoria  Street, 
and  Ralph  Ellis,  about  whom  we  hear  in  "The 
Lake"  may  be  traced  to  Edouard  Dujardin,  the 
author  of  "La  Source  du  Fleuve  chretien."  The 
author's  own  interests  appear  to  a  very  great  ex- 
tent either  as  a  background  to  the  essential  story, 
or  in  intercalary  sections.  The  background  of 
"Evelyn  Innes"  is  fullest  in  this  respect;  music, 
religion,  painting,  literature  are  drawn  upon  in  its 
composition.  In  "The  Lake"  there  is  again  the 
background  of  a  religious  problem,  and  some  ex- 
cellent criticism  of  art  appears  in  the  letters  of 
Rose  Leicester.  It  would  be  futile  to  point  out 
these  various  correspondences  between  the  au- 
thor's work  and  his  personal  experiences  and 
temperament  except  for  the  purpose  of  illustrating 
his  underlying  methods  as  an  artist.  He  has  ob- 
served life  very  carefully  and  analysed  character 
thoroughly;  he  has  explored  many  intellectual 
paths,  and,  finally,  he  has  always  been  sensitive  to 
all  emotional  and  sensuous  experience.    And  from 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    179 

this  eclecticism  he  has   woven  the  tissue  of  his 
art. 

The  outstanding  quality  of  his  writing,  and  the 
one  wherein  he  excels  any  other  contemporary 
English  novelist,  is  his  ability  to  project  his  char- 
acters into  life,  and  to  create  for  each  of  them  a 
complete  psychology.  There  is,  throughout  the 
whole  course  of  Moore's  writing,  not  a  single 
"stock  character"  to  be  found,  not  even  a  single 
character  of  which  we  can  say  that  he  is  true  to 
"type."  Each  of  the  personages  that  find  their 
way  into  his  novels  is  sharply  and  clearly  drawn  as 
an  individual,  reacting  to  life  in  exactly  the  fashion 
that  we  should  expect  them  to  from  our  knowledge 
of  their  past  experience.  And  since  the  author  has 
chosen  to  tell  his  story  by  revealing  the  reaction  of 
every  character  concerned  therein,  this  quality  of 
inevitability  in  their  psychological  composition  Is 
the  foundation  of  their  truth  to  reality.  The 
professed  naturalist  in  art  follows  a  method  similar 
to  that  of  the  scientist;  he  collects  innumerable 
facts  from  which  he  makes  a  selection,  and  the 
generalization  that  he  draws  from  the  results  of 
this  process  is  a  complete  description  of  a  single 
phase  of  life.  This  was  the  method  of  Zola,  and  In 
the  main  It  has  been  the  method  of  George  Moore. 


l8o  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

The  naturalist  usually  achieves  a  description  of 
life  that  is  no  more  vital  or  dynamic  than  a  scien- 
tific formula;  it  bears  the  same  relation  to  life  that 
the  formula  for  the  composition  of  water  bears  to 
the  chemical  process  from  which  water  results. 
It  is  usually  a  description  of  life,  it  tells  facts  about 
life,  but  it  does  not  set  life  before  you.  And  it  is  in 
this  quality  of  setting  life  before  the  reader,  of 
giving  him  an  "imitation"  of  life  by  imitating  the 
methods  of  nature,  that  George  Moore  has  ex- 
celled. 

The  other  great  quality  of  his  writing  lies  in 
what  may  be  termed  the  art  of  the  background. 
Here  Moore  the  novelist  profits,  in  many  in- 
stances, by  the  experiences  of  Moore  the  critic  of 
the  arts.  In  "Evelyn  Innes"  the  reader's  senses 
are  wooed  by  the  many  beautiful  passages  descrip- 
tive of  the  effect  of  music,  by  the  sensuous  impres- 
sions of  Evelyn's  room  with  its  delicate  eighteenth 
century  furniture  and  exquisite  Boucher  drawings; 
by  the  description  of  a  room,  in  this  case  the 
motivating  cause  in  the  story,  in  "The  Lovers  of 
Orelay."  In  "The  Mummer's  Wife"  and  "Esther 
Waters,"  two  stories  in  which  the  background  is 
one  of  almost  unrelieved  sordidness,  his  genius  for 
conveying    concrete     impression    is    even    more 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    l8l 

apparent.  And  in  "The  Lake,"  where  the  back- 
ground of  the  lonely,  beautiful,  wistful  Irish  land- 
scape is  the  spring  of  all  action,  it  is  directed 
toward  an  essential  symbolism. 

George  Moore,  rather  than  any  other  writer, 
has  been  the  playboy  of  recent  English  literature. 
Early  in  his  career  he  voiced  the  rebellion  against 
traditional  morality  that  has  become  one  of  the 
chief  concerns  of  his  art;  and  his  French  training 
led  him  to  a  somewhat  freer  expression  of  sex  than 
that  to  which  modern  English  literature  has  been 
accustomed.  One  cannot  quarrel  with  an  artist 
concerning  his  choice  of  subject,  for  criticism  is 
only  occupied  with  the  results  achieved,  and  these 
results  must  be  measured,  in  the  case  of  a  writer,  by 
the  effect  upon  his  readers.  For  a  man  to  claim  as 
Moore  does,  that  Christianity  has  lowered  the 
status  of  woman,  and  has  founded  its  morality 
upon  the  principle  that  sexual  intercourse  is  un- 
objectionable when  licensed  by  a  ceremony,  but 
reprehensible  otherwise,  is  for  him  merely  to  ex- 
press an  opinion.  In  his  opinion  the  sexual  func- 
tion is  as  truly  an  expression  of  the  creative  im- 
pulse as  in  the  creation  of  a  work  of  art.  And  in 
this  he  is  merely  following  the  doctrine  of  Plato. 
But  the  difference  between    Plato  and    George 


1 82  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

Moore  lies  in  a  difference  in  the  emotional  reaction 
of  the  reader.  The  one  dilates  the  emotions;  the 
other  degrades  them.  Moore's  greatest  defect  as 
a  writer  lies  in  his  preoccupation  with  sex.  It  is  a 
defect  that  is  especially  glaring  in  a  professed 
naturalist  in  art,  for  life  does  not  entirely  resolve 
itself  into  sensualism,  and  Moore,  in  subordinating 
all  experience  to  the  exercise  of  a  single  function, 
betrays  a  limited  and  impoverished  perspective  on 
life.  In  this  respect,  and  it  is  a  defect  that  mars 
almost  one  half  of  his  work,  Moore,  like  his  com- 
patriots, Wilde  and  Shaw,  consciously  attempted 
to  shock  the  English  public,  and  succeeded.  When 
he  came  to  Ireland,  he  forsook  the  Catholic  for  the 
Protestant  faith;  but  although  he  published  "The 
Lake"  (1905)  and  "The  Untilled  Field"  (1903) 
during  his  residence  there,  he  was  not  excoriated, 
as  was  Yeats  upon  the  first  performance  of  "The 
Countess  Cathleen,"  by  the  Irish  clergy;  and  this 
must  have  proved  a  bitter  disappointment. 

Of  his  purely  Irish  writing,  the  two  early  books, 
"A  Drama  in  Muslin"  (1886)  and  "Parnell  and  his 
Island"  (1887)  may  be  briefly  passed  over.  "A 
Drama  in  Muslin"  is  powerfully  written  in  Moore's 
earlier  and  more  realistic  manner;  and  since  it  is 
concerned  with  an  Ireland  that  has  disappeared 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    183 

with  the  enforcement  of  the  Land  Acts,  its  chief 
value  today  is  as  a  record  of  the  feudal,  landlord- 
ridden  Ireland  of  two  generations  ago.  "Parnell 
and  his  Island  "  is  a  collection  of  sketches,  satiric  in 
their  vein,  written  about  Ireland  from  an  English 
point  of  view.  "Evelyn  Innes,"  as  has  been 
intimated,  touched  briefly  upon  modern  Ireland 
and  the  literary  movement  in  the  character  of 
Ulick  Dean,  who  is  concerned  with  folk-lore, 
ancestral  memory,  and  pyschic  research  in  the 
manner  of  Yeats  and  of  A.  E.  "The  Untilled 
Field  "  was  begun  as  a  series  of  stories  to  be  trans- 
lated into  Gaelic  by  Taidgh  O'Donoghue  with  the 
purpose  of  serving  as  good  modern  literature  for 
the  students  of  the  Gaelic  League.  It  is  written 
sparely  and  with  a  barrenness  of  style  unlike 
Moore's  other  work,  possibly  because  it  was 
merely  to  serve  the  translator's  purposes.  But  the 
stories  themselves  go  to  the  heart  of  Irish  char- 
acter and  illustrate  the  fine  qualities  of  Moore's 
realism  in  their  handling  of  Irish  peasant  life.  In 
the  character  of  Father  MacTurnan,  the  author 
has  portrayed  with  wonderful  fidelity  the  tempera- 
ment of  the  gentle,  superstitious  old  priest  between 
whose  psychology  and  his  own  there  could  be  no 
wider  divergence.    This  study  of  celibate  tempera- 


1 84  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

ment,  foreshadowed  in  the  three  stories  of  an 
earlier  period  in  his  career,  ''Celibates,"  proves  the 
fundamental  impersonality  of  his  art. 

"The  Lake"  many  critics  believe  to  be  the  best 
writing  of  the  author's  *' later  manner."  It  is, 
needless  to  say,  beautifully  written,  and  is  the  one 
novel  of  his  later  years  which  expresses  the  effect 
of  the  Celtic  episode  in  his  career  upon  his  art. 
There  is  a  certain  gentle  beauty  and  a  certain 
wistfulness  and  pathos  of  emotional  content  in  the 
writing  of  it  that  did  not  appear  in  any  of  the 
author's  work  until  he  had  come  to  reside  in  Ire- 
land. But  whether  his  own  vision  of  the  dun  west 
of  Ireland  is  responsible,  or  whether  he  read  into 
the  landscape  much  that  he  felt  in  the  poetry  of 
Yeats  and  saw  in  the  paintings  of  A.  E.  cannot  be 
determined.  Certain  it  is  that  the  rippling,  gleam- 
ing hardness  of  his  earlier  style,  a  Celtic  char- 
acteristic apparent  in  the  writing  of  Wilde  and  of 
Shaw,  was  softened  and  made  sensitive  to  a  beauty 
that  he  had  not  felt  before.  "Memoirs  of  my 
Dead  Life"  contains  only  one  impression  of  Ire- 
land; in  "Resurgam,"  descriptive  of  his  mother's 
funeral,  he  expresses  the  wish  to  be  buried  with  his 
fathers  in  the  cemetery  of  Lough  Gara. 

"Hail  and  Farewell"  is  a  delightfully  amusing 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    185 

record  of  his  connection  with  the  Irish  revival,  and 
an  account  of  his  residence  in  Dublin.  It  is  quite 
unreliable  as  to  fact,  but  It  contains  some  malicious 
and  roguish  criticism  of  the  men  who  were  writing 
in  Ireland  while  he  lived  there.  "Euphorian  in 
Texas"  published  in  the  "English  Review"  for 
July,  1914,  is  an  omitted  chapter  of  that  work,  a 
chronique  scandaleuse  in  the  manner  of  "The 
Lovers  of  Orelay." 

Moore's  effect  upon  the  Celtic  revival  in  litera- 
ture has  been  slight,  although  he  has  influenced 
some  of  the  younger  realistic  novelists.  Funda- 
mentally opposed  to  the  spirit  of  the  movement, 
he  entered  it  confessedly  out  of  curiosity,  was  in- 
fluenced in  turn  by  Yeats,  Martyn,  Egllnton,  and 
chiefly  by  A.  E.,  and  left  it  because  he  felt  that 
Ireland,  after  all,  was  not  his  natural  environment. 

To  that  period  of  the  renascence  belongs  the 
work  of  William  Buckley,  Shan  Bullock,  and 
"George  Birmingham"  (Rev.  J.  0.  Hannay). 
William  Buckley  is  a  writer  known  by  one  volume, 
"Croppies  Lie  Down"  (1903),  a  realistic  story  of 
life  in  Ulster;  since  writing  which  he  has  done  noth- 
ing of  any  great  importance.  Shan  Bullock  writes 
of  the  lives  of  the  farmers  in  the  northwest.  Also  a 
realist,  he  deals  after  the  manner  of  Thomas  Hardy 


1 86  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

in  the  "  Wessex  Tales"  with  the  bitter,  unrelenting 
hardship  of  wreaking  a  bare  existence  in  the  Orange 
counties  of  the  north.  "George  Birmingham"  is  a 
Protestant  clergyman  of  Westport,  whose  "Span- 
ish Gold,"  "The  Seething  Pot"  (1904)  and  "Gen- 
eral John  Regan"  (191 3)  are  all,  in  their  way, 
excellent  studies  of  life  in  the  west.  He  was  the 
first  novelist  to  treat  Irish  life  with  something  of 
the  humor  that  Lady  Gregory  has  in  her  plays. 
The  Hon.  Emily  Lawless  has  also  written  of  the 
west  coast  and  of  the  legend  connected  therewith. 
Canon  Sheehan  has  written  several  pleasantly 
humorous  novels,  of  which  "My  New  Curate" 
(1899)  is  the  best;  he  and  the  two  ladies  who  employ 
the  double  pseudonym  of  "  E.  OE.  Sommerville 
and  Martin  Ross  "  belong  to  a  generation  of  writers 
which  has  almost  disappeared  since  the  beginning 
of  the  renascence.  William  Butler  Yeats,  during 
his  London  period,  experimented  with  the  novel, 
and  produced  "John  Sherman"  (1891),  a  tale  of 
Mayo  and  London,  and  "Dhoya"  (1891)  a  tale  of 
ancient  Ireland,  neither  of  which  is  fundamentally 
important. 

The  renascence  has,  however,  brought  forth  two 
novelists  who  stand  in  the  front  rank  of  contem- 
porary English  writing,  and  whose  work,  unlike 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE     1 87 

that  of  George  Moore,  is  the  direct  product  of  the 
literary  movement  in  Ireland.  They  are  St. 
John  G.  Ervine  and  James  Stephens. 

Ervine,  whose  plays  have  been  discussed  in  a 
previous  chapter,  is  the  author  of  a  novel  of  life 
in  Belfast,  "Mrs.  Martin's  Man"  (1915),  a  volume 
of  miscellaneous  sketches,  "Eight  O'Clock  and 
Other  Studies"  (191 5),  and  a  novel  of  London, 
"AHce  and  a  Family"  (191 5).  Like  Padraic 
Colum,  he  is  concerned  in  his  plays,  and  also  in 
his  novels,  with  the  great  middle  class  which  he 
considers  the  arteries  of  the  race,  and  which  lives, 
whether  in  town  or  country,  a  life  characteristically 
its  own.  His  approach  to  life  is  singularly  direct, 
and  his  interest  lies  rather  in  the  mental  life  of  his 
characters  in  its  relation  to  their  social  life  than  in 
the  purely  external  details  of  existence.  The 
tragedy  of  physical  hunger  in  the  peasant  life  of 
Ireland  is  largely  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  has  been 
replaced  by  a  spiritual  bankruptcy  and  a  reoccupa- 
tion  with  the  means  rather  than  with  the  end  of 
life  that  is  reflected  in  the  work  of  men  like  Ervine 
and  Bullock.  In  "Mrs.  Martin's  Man"  he  has 
written  the  tragedy  of  a  woman  whose  existence 
was  a  career  of  altruism.  Her  history  is  that  of  a 
life  baulked  in  its  emotional  and  intellectual  pos- 


1 88  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

sibilities,  a  victory  for  the  force  of  circumstance 
that  all  but  destroyed  her,  were  it  not  for  the  fund 
of  common  sense  with  which  she  opposed  fate. 
Her  humor  is  homely  and  shrewd,  and  like  that 
of  Alice,  the  little  cockney  girl  in  his  novel  of 
London,  it  comes  of  direct  contact  with  experi- 
ence. Ervine  treats  life  simply  and  impartially, 
with  a  degree  of  impersonalism  that  is  reminiscent 
of  Tourgenieff;  he  conceives  it  as  a  continuous 
process,  without  beginning  and  without  end,  and, 
in  making  the  selection  that  art  demands,  he 
chooses  only  a  point  of  departure  and  one  of  con- 
clusion. He  obtrudes  no  moral  conviction  upon 
his  audience,  but,  as  he  has  said  in  a  critical  essay  ^ 
the  rebuke  lies  in  the  material  of  his  art  and  in  the 
motivation  of  life  as  he  sees  it  being  lived  by  the 
people  of  whom  he  writes.  The  fine  qualities  of 
his  work  are  the  strongly  conceived  and  perfectly 
realized  characterization,  the  completeness  of  his 
vision  of  life,  and  his  genuine  dramatic  instinct. 
His  "Eight  O'clock  and  Other  Studies"  contain 
in  a  brief  compass  some  of  the  most  dramatically 
powerful  writing  that  has  been  done  by  any  of  the 
authors  connected  with  the  Irish  movement,  and 

^  "The  Irish  Dramatist  and  the  Irish  People,"  "  Forum," 
June,  1914. 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    189 

make  evident  the  reason  for  St.  John  Ervine's 
success  as  a  novelist.  His  fundamentally  dra- 
matic conception  of  life  as  he  treats  it  in  the  novel 
may  perhaps  be  due  to  the  fact  that  his  training 
was  that  of  the  playwright;  to  whatever  influence 
it  is  due,  however,  his  work  marks  an  advance  upon 
any  of  the  prose  fiction  written  by  contemporary 
Irish  authors  of  the  realistic  school. 

The  work  of  James  Stephens  would  seem,  at 
first  sight,  to  be  as  widely  removed  in  content  and 
spirit  from  the  novels  of  St.  John  Ervine  as  it  is  in 
expression.  But  this  disjunction  is  only  apparent, 
and  the  distinction  is  hardly  as  real  as  it  looks  to 
be.  James  Stephens  began  his  literary  career  as  a 
poet  and  he  has  continued  writing  verse,  although 
his  greatest  success  has  been  gained  as  a  novelist. 
A  little  of  the  legend  of  his  early  life  is  told  by 
George  Moore  in  "Vale";  he  is  reputed  to  have 
tramped  the  length  and  breadth  of  Ireland,  to 
have  been  adopted  by  an  applewoman  in  Belfast, 
but  whether  there  is  merely  one  of  the  myths  of 
which  Dublin  so  often  makes  the  authors  of  the 
renascence  heroes,  or  an  exaggeration  of  Moore's, 
is  difficult  to  say.  Certain  it  is  that  his  discovery 
as  a  writer  was  due  to  A.  E. 

The  fundamental  point  of  view  that  underlies  his 


I90  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

apprbach  to  life  consists  in  regarding  everything 
that  forms  a  part  of  human  experience  as  a  part  of 
reality.  Understanding  of  life  is  achieved  only 
in  the  degree  that  life  is  experienced,  and  the  sole 
open  sesame  to  existence  lies  in  keenness  of  per- 
ception and  sensitiveness  of  intuition.  To  live 
adequately  is  to  realize,  emotionally  and  intel- 
lectually, the  widest  range  of  experience  that  life 
offers  to  the  individual,  and  to  hold  the  spirit  open 
to  the  dynamic  force  of  change. 

Society  he  sees  as  a  highly  sophisticated  organ- 
ization, largely  built  upon  settled  convictions, 
time-savers  in  thinking,  the  purpose  of  which  is 
the  definition  and  limitation  of  the  liberties  of  the 
individual.  The  conduct  of  life,  for  him,  is  a 
product  of  the  interpretation  of  experience  by  the 
individual;  conviction  is  a  confession  of  a  limited 
knowledge  of  life,  and  since  life  appears  to  have 
the  character  of  a  flux,  an  inadequate  reflection 
of  experience.  Truth  for  him,  as  for  William 
James,  is  the  good  in  the  way  of  belief;  a  concep- 
tion is  true  if  it  entails  a  practically  useful  result 
intellectually  or  spiritually.  It  is  a  quality  that 
adheres  not  to  life  itself,  but  to  a  human  interpre- 
tation of  it.  The  good  presents  itself  to  him  as 
those  factors  of  experience  which  have  been  com- 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE     191 

prehended  and  conquered,  and  which  may  be 
counted  upon  as  invariably  In  result  under  similar 
conditions.  The  factors  which  have  eluded  con- 
quest are  called  false;  wrong  is  a  quality  to  be 
predicated  of  the  unsolved  problems  of  expe- 
rience. Things  which  have  been  true  become 
false,  and  new  conceptions  arise  to  take  their 
place,  and  a  similar  progress  Is  true  of  the  spiritual 
life.  And  James  Stephens,  accepting  experience 
as  the  criterion  of  verifiability  of  any  hypothesis, 
brings  down  to  earth  the  gods  as  they  live  now, 
and  leaves  unrealized  the  divine  unity  which  he 
believes  In  the  process  of  generation  as  the  course 
of  progress  advances.  For  humanity  is  constantly 
making  more  God  just  as  it  is  constantly  making 
more  truth. 

The  author  of  "Euphues"  was  the  first  English 
novelist  to  bring  the  novel  indoors,  and  to  give 
us  a  picture  of  social  life  and  manners  as  they  were 
developed  by  an  age  that  for  the  first  time  in  his- 
tory began  to  possess  that  privacy  of  existence 
which  we  deem  so  necessary  today.  The  essen- 
tial contribution  of  James  Stephens  to  the  trend 
of  modern  fiction  lies  in  the  fact  that  unlike  Lyly, 
he  has  taken  the  novel  from  the  narrow  confines 
of  the  house  and  brought  It  again  into  the  open 


192  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

air.  In  the  degree  that  his  interest  is  confined 
to  the  novelty  in  the  unchartered  corners  of  ex- 
perience, he  is  a  romanticist;  but  the  romantic 
for  him  is  always  identified  with  the  natural  and 
real,  for  he  has  taken  the  modern  mind  and  freed 
it  from  the  trammels  imposed  by  civilization, 
and  given  it  birth  in  a  more  natural  form  of  life. 
Romance  he  finds  in  what  to  nature  would  have 
been  the  commonplace  had  not  society  inter- 
vened, and  by  making  nature  unnatural,  made 
natural  life  romantic  in  its  splendid  isolation.  So 
that  the  people  in  his  novels,  although  they  pos- 
sess the  modern  mind,  live  in  an  amoral  world  and 
deal  directly  with  experience. 

"Humor,"  says  the  angel  Finaun  in  "The 
Demigods,"  "is  the  health  of  the  mind."  Humor 
consists  for  him  in  preserving  an  attitude  of 
openmindedness,  in  a  sensitive  awareness  to  the 
quality  of  life,  in  the  denial  of  completed  and  un- 
changeable conviction.  Humor,  viewing  the  hu- 
man will  baffled  by  a  wall  of  circumstance  that  it 
can  neither  evade  nor  penetrate,  conceives  the 
situation  not  as  tragedy,  but  as  irony,  and  that, 
in  the  novels  of  James  Stephens,  is  the  attitude 
of  the  gods.  The  eternal  combat  between  good 
and  evil  resolves  itself  into  the  struggle  of  man  to 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    193 

achieve  ever  more  complete  control  over  experi- 
ence, and  failure  in  the  contest  being  ironic,  is 
more  tragic  than  tragedy  itself,  in  that  it  is  com- 
prehended from  the  vantage  of  humor. 

"Literature,"  he  has  said  in  a  recent  essay,^ 
"is  something  more  than  art;  it  is  the  expression 
of  philosophy  in  art,  and  is  at  once  the  portrayal 
of  an  individual  and  a  racial  psychology.  A 
writer  is  not  one  who  portrays  life;  he  is  one  who 
digests  life,  and  every  book  of  his  is  a  lecture  on 
the  state  of  his  mental  health."  The  quality  most 
commonly  ascribed  to  the  art  of  James  Stephens 
is  that  of  imagination,  and  this  perhaps  more  than 
any  other  quality  of  his  art,  will  illustrate  that  he 
is  essentially  a  realist.  The  basis  of  imagination 
in  art  is  a  close  observation  of  life  and  a  profound 
insight  into  character  and  motive.  The  language 
of  imagination  is  essentially  that  of  a  mind  sensi- 
tive to  the  varied  impressions  that  life  registers 
upon  the  individual  consciousness;  expression,  far 
from  being  a  product  of  remoteness  from  life,  is 
enriched  only  in  so  far  as  it  depends  upon  experi- 
ence for  introspection  alone  will  produce  but  an 
arid  vocabulary.     The  artist,  therefore,  can  find 

^  "The   Old   Woman's   Money,"    "  Century   Magazine," 
May,  1915. 


194  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

his  imagination  only  in  training  his  observation, 
in  the  cultivation  of  life  itself,  for  immediate  ex- 
perience is  the  foundation  of  all  true  art.  It  is 
precisely  this  that  James  Stephens  has  done: 
"The  Crock  of  Gold"  (1910),  "Here  Are  Ladies" 
(1913),  "The  Charwoman's  Daughter"  (1912), 
or,  as  it  is  called  in  the  American  edition,  "Mary, 
Mary,"  and  "The  Demigods"  (1914)  are  the  fruit 
of  experience  and  reflection  upon  it. 

His  chief,  and  perhaps  his  only,  interest  is  hu- 
manity. He  can  be  gentle,  protesting,  vigorous, 
and  in  full  rebellion  against  modern  life,  but  his 
work  is  leavened  always  by  a  rich  humor  that  is 
new  to  literature.  "The  Crock  of  Gold"  (1910), 
the  best  piece  of  imaginative  writing  that  has  been 
done  in  English  letters  in  many  years,  is  a  book  so 
varied  in  its  temper,  so  merry  and  so  sane  in  its 
fundamental  contentions,  so  baffling  in  its  spirit 
that  comment  would  be  impertinent  if  possible  at 
all.  "The  Charwoman's  Daughter"  (191 2)  is 
the  first  novel  of  Dublin  life  today  that  has  been 
written;  it  is  also  a  remarkably  tender  picture  of 
the  unfolding  of  a  girl's  mind.  "Here  Are 
Ladies"  (1913)  is  as  bitterly  ironic,  in  part,  as  is 
his  poetry,  and  contains  some  exceptionally 
powerful  studies  of  character.     "The  Demigods" 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE     195 

(1914),  his  last  novel,  continues  the  vein  of  "The 
Crock  of  Gold." 

Stephens  and  Ervine  are  the  two  outstanding 
novelists  of  contemporary  Ireland  whose  work 
directly  reflects  the  influence  of  the  literary  move- 
ment. There  remains  one  other  writer,  who  if 
he  has  not  attained  equally  as  an  artist,  has  done 
work  of  distinction.  Patrick  MacGIll  has  written 
two  sequential  novels,  "Children  of  the  Dead 
End"  (1914)  and  "The  Rat  Pit"  (1915),  dealing 
with  one  of  the  most  Important  social  and  eco- 
nomic problems  that  the  thinkers  In  Ireland  are 
facing;  peasant  poverty,  and  its  consequence, 
migratory  and  casual  labor.  Both  novels  are,  in 
a  sense,  autobiographical.  The  first  deals  with 
the  life  of  a  peasant  lad,  come  of  an  Impoverished 
family  of  fisher-folk  In  Donegal,  whose  services  are 
auctioned  off  In  the  labor  market  and  who  later 
becomes  one  of  the  bands  of  migratory  laborers 
who  cross  to  Scotland  each  summer  as  harvest 
hands.  The  second  deals  with  the  girl  that  he 
loves,  who  Is  wronged  by  the  son  of  the  farmer  to 
whom  she  hires  out,  and  who  finally  becomes  a 
woman  of  the  streets,  only  to  die  In  the  utmost 
squalor  in  Glasgow.  The  two  together  present  a 
picture  of  the  misery  of  peasant  life  In  one  part  of 


196  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

Ireland  and  of  the  greater  misery  to  which  the 
peasants  sometimes  escape  in  the  underworld 
of  the  cities  that  is  not  easily  forgotten.  Patrick 
MacGill  has  attempted  to  rouse  the  social  con- 
science of  Ireland  and  of  England  in  somewhat  the 
same  way  and  to  somewhat  the  same  conditions 
that  the  I.  A.  O.  S.  has  done.  His  books  come 
out  of  the  warp  and  woof  of  life,  and  in  their  telling 
are  so  relentlessly  natural,  and  exhibit  so  curious 
a  lack  of  rhetorical  indignation,  that  their  power 
as  social  documents  can  be  compared  to  that  of 
"Crime  and  Punishment."  The  same  dispas- 
sionate presentation  of  fact  marks  the  work  of 
MacGill  and  of  the  Russians;  perhaps,  indeed, 
because  back  of  both  Irish  and  of  Russian  litera- 
ture there  is  a  social  consciousness  seeking  expres- 
sion, and  revolting  against  the  traditional  accep- 
tance of  existing  conditions. 

In  the  field  of  folk-lore  much  important  work 
has  been  done  that  in  a  measure  provided  the 
foundations  upon  which  the  earlier  writers  of  the 
renascence  built.  The  work  of  Dr.  P.  W.  Joyce 
("Old  Celtic  Romances,"  1879),  of  Standish 
O'Grady  ("Heroic  Period,"  1878;  "  Cuchulain  and 
his  Contemporaries,"  1880),  of  Dr.  Hyde  and  of 
Dr.  Sigerson  has  already  been  commented  upon. 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    197 

William  Larminie  for  a  while  devoted  some  atten- 
tion to  the  collection  of  lore,  and  published  a  vol- 
ume of  "West  Irish  Folk-Tales"  (1895),  Violet 
Russell,  the  wife  of  A.  E.,  produced  "Children  of 
the  Dawn"  (1914),  Lady  Gregory  wrote  "Cuchu- 
lain  of  Muirthemne"  (1903),  "The  Kiltartan 
History  Book"  (1909),  "Gods  and  Fighting  Men" 
(1904)  and  William  Butler  Yeats  gave  us  "Stories 
of  Red  Hanrahan"  (1904)  and  "The  Celtic  Twi- 
light" (1893). 

All  this  work  has  been  important,  chiefly  be- 
cause it  provided  the  material  upon  which  the 
writers  of  the  renascence  were  to  found  a  great 
part  of  their  art,  and  in  two  instances  at  least,  it 
has  in  itself  been  great  literature.  These  two  are 
the  work  of  Lady  Gregory  and  of  Yeats.  Mrs. 
Russell's  "Children  of  the  Dawn"  is  a  retelling  of 
the  cycle  of  the  Fianna  in  very  simple  and  very 
beautiful  English,  written  with  so  evident  a  poetic 
feeling  that  it  holds  the  interest  of  both  children 
and  their  elders.  Patriotic  Americans  will  find  it 
profitable  to  compare  the  work  of  this  Irish  au- 
thoress with  the  beautiful  volume  of  "Tales  of 
the  Enchanted  Islands  of  the  Atlantic"  by  Thomas 
Wentworth  Higginson;  that  it  does  not  suffer  by 
comparison   with    the   work   of    the   gentle    and 


198  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

lamented  Bostonian  illustrates  the  high  quality  of 
Mrs.  Russell's  art. 

Lady  Gregory  was  Inspired  to  an  interest  in  the 
collection  of  folk-lore  by  William  Butler  Yeats, 
and  she,  in  turn  inspired  him  with  the  idea  of  re- 
writing many  of  his  "Tales  of  Red  Hanrahan"  in 
folk-idiom.  Her  "Gods  and  Fighting  Men"  is  a 
work  of  enduring  value,  but  her  fame  as  an  inter- 
preter of  legend  is  likely  to  rest  upon  "Cuchulain  of 
Muirthemne,"  which  is  more  ambitious  in  its  scope 
than  the  later  book,  or  than  "A  Book  of  Saints  and 
Wonders."  What  she  has  done  is  to  select  from 
among  many  versions  of  the  folk-tales  of  the 
Cuchulain  cycle  those  which  best  fit  into  a  con- 
nected whole,  rejecting  an  episode  here  and  adding 
one  from  another  version  in  its  place,  interpreting 
in  another  place  a  passage  so  remote  from  modern 
feeling  as  to  be  almost  incomprehensible  to  us,  and 
thus  achieving  a  retelling  of  the  legends  that  will 
bear  the  same  relation  to  us  as  audience  as  did  the 
original  versions  to  their  audiences.  Finally,  she 
has  clothed  the  legends  in  the  dialect  of  Kiltartan, 
both  because  she  Is  a  subscriber  to  the  "language 
theory"  and  because  the  Idiom  Is  well  suited  to  an 
effort  that  in  Its  original  Intention  was  oratorical 
rather    than    literary.      Lady   Gregory   has    not 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    199 

scrupled  to  acknowledge  her  debt  to  many  of  the 
modern  folk-lorists  of  more  literal  tendencies, 
among  them  O'Grady  and  Professor  Kuno  Meyer, 
the  brilliant  German  philologist  who  has  done  so 
much  for  the  Irish  renascence  In  this  field  and  for 
the  Gaelic  League.  The  Irish  legends  are  usually 
too  greatly  supernatural  In  their  texture  to  appeal 
to  the  modern  mind  to  as  great  an  extent  as  do  the 
Greek  or  Scandinavian.  There  is  seldom  to  be 
found  any  motivation  arising  from  purely  human 
Interests  or  psychology,  although  they  are  expres- 
sive of  a  very  beautiful  chlvalric  standard  of  life, 
of  a  certain  mysticism  in  dealing  with  the  world  of 
nature,  and  in  one  instance  at  least.  In  the  tale  of 
Deirdre,  have  given  us  one  of  the  most  pathetic 
stories  In  the  world's  literature.  It  is,  however,  in 
their  conception  of  the  vitalism  of  nature  that  they 
are  most  interesting  to  us,  since  this  conception  Is 
basic  In  the  work  of  many  of  the  modern  poets. 
And  Lady  Gregory's  translations  are  remarkable 
for  the  fidelity  and  beauty  with  which  she  has 
rendered  this  old  feeling  of  the  hidden  presence  of 
nature  in  Its  many  moods. 

William  Butler  Yeats  has  concerned  himself  less 
with  the  heroic  legend,  In  his  prose  writing,  than  he 
has  with  the  folk-tales  that  he  has  heard  in  his 


200  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

journeys  over  the  country.  The  "Stories  of  Red 
Hanrahan,"  written  in  the  Kiltartan  idiom,  and 
dealing  with  the  life  of  a  hedge-schoolmaster  and 
the  legend  that  grew  up  about  him  after  his  death 
he  has  written  simply  and  with  directness;  in  "The 
Secret  Rose"  (1897),  in  the  same  volume,  he  has 
recorded  visions  of  the  fairies  of  contemporary 
rural  Ireland,  and  of  the  heroic  past,  and  in  "The 
Celtic  Twilight"  he  has  given  us  the  most  beauti- 
ful of  all  his  prose  writing  in  "Dust  Hath  Closed 
Helen's  Eye,"  a  tale  of  the  blind  poet  Raftery  and 
of  the  lovely  Mary  Hynes,  whom  he  loved  and  for 
whom  he  died.  This  interest  in  folk-tale  and  in 
fairy  lore  and  a  growing  interest  in  symbolism  and 
mystic  philosophy  led  him  to  write  "Rosa  Alche- 
mica"  (1897)  and  "The  Tables  of  the  Law"  (1904) 
neither  of  which  are  as  successful  as  artistic  crea- 
tions as  are  his  prose  tales. 

Of  late  years  folk-lore  has  interested  the  purely 
literary  artists  of  the  renascence  rather  less  than  it 
did  originally  at  the  inception  of  the  movement. 
With  the  coming  of  writers  who  found  their 
material  in  the  changing  social  conditions  of 
peasant  life,  and  who  look  to  the  future  rather 
than  to  the  past  as  a  refuge  from  the  present,  the 
world  of  imagination  and  legend  has  practically 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    20l 

disappeared  from  contemporary  Irish  writing. 
Therefore  the  interest  in  folk-tale  and  poetry,  and 
much  of  the  writing  that  came  of  that  interest  is  of 
greater  importance  as  an  influence  upon  creative 
writing,  and  as  an  indication  of  the  earliest  direc- 
tion taken  by  that  writing,  than  as  a  literary 
product  in  itself  of  enduring  importance. 

This  influence  is  exemplified  at  the  height  of  its 
power  in  the  writings  contributed  to  the  literature 
of  the  renascence  by  William  Sharp  under  the 
pseudonym  of  "Fiona  Macleod."  During  the 
eleven  years  that  elapsed  between  the  publication 
of  "Pharais"  in  1894  and  the  death  of  the  author 
in  1905,  "Fiona"  was  certainly  the  most  widely 
known  and  talked  of  author  of  the  Celtic  group. 
For  this  two  reasons  may  be  advanced;  the  wide- 
spread interest  in  "her"  writings  was  caused  in 
part  by  the  mystery  with  which  "she"  surrounded 
"herself,"  and  in  part  by  the  qualities  of  style  that 
are  present  in  the  writings  themselves.  A  year 
after  the  death  of  Sharp  the  secret  was  revealed,  a 
secret  which  many  had  guessed  but  which  had 
always  been  denied,  and  in  191 2  Mrs.  Sharp  offi- 
cially acknowledged  it  in  her  memoir  of  her  hus- 
band. Mrs.  Sharp  has  recorded  her  belief  in  the 
theory  of  dual  personality  which  Sharp  himself 


202  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

thought  responsible  for  his  writings  as  "Fiona,"  a 
brief  comment  upon  which  has  been  made  else- 
where in  the  course  of  this  study,  and  the  problem 
has  some  interest  for  psychologists.  Sharp  had, 
however,  been  given  to  the  perpetration  of  literary 
hoaxes,  and  the  quality  of  his  writings  as  Fiona 
precluded  the  use  of  his  own  name,  familiar  as  that 
name  was  to  readers  as  that  of  a  critic  and  nov- 
elist, so  that  there  seems  little  necessity  to  believe 
that  the  consciousness  of  another  self  was  imme- 
diately responsible  for  his  Celtic  writing.  Al- 
though a  Scotchman  by  birth  and  a  Londoner  in 
his  mature  life,  his  work  as  "Fiona  Macleod" 
belongs  to  the  Irish  renascence  of  letters,  having 
been  directly  influenced  by  it,  and,  in  the  case  of 
his  plays,  having  been  written  especially  for  it. 
He  does  not  enter  into  the  previous  discussion  of 
the  drama  chiefly  because  his  two  plays,  "The 
Immortal  Hour"  (19CX))  and  "The  House  of 
Usna"  (1900),  although  written  for  "The  Irish 
Literary  Theatre"  were  never  produced  by  it,  and 
because  his  work  as  a  dramatist  is  not  of  any  com- 
pelling importance.  The  publication  of  his  critical 
essay,  "Celtic,"  wherein  he  recorded  his  disbelief 
in  the  separatist  political  movement,  and  his  belief 
that  Ireland's  destiny  of  greatness  was  to  be  ful- 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    203 

filled  in  the  absorption  of  the  race  by  other  races,  a 
belief  to  which  he  had  given  voice  in  "The  House 
of  Usna,"  effectually  alienated  the  sympathies  of 
most  of  the  founders  of  the  Irish  movement.  His 
two  plays  possess  undeniable  atmospheric  quality, 
and,  like  all  the  writings  of  "Fiona,"  great  beauty 
of  style.  They  do  not  seem,  however,  essential 
drama;  they  lean  heavily,  even  in  theory,  upon  the 
early  plays  of  Maeterlinck.  The  theory  which 
they  embody  was  one  which  looked  to  the  possibil- 
ity of  creating  a  "psychic  drama,"  a  drama  of 
disembodied  presences,  a  drama  entirely  spiritual 
in  its  content.  And  although  he  experimented  to 
this  end  in  his  two  plays,  they  do  not,  like  the  early 
plays  of  Yeats,  who  was  also  influenced  by  Maeter- 
linck, seem  to  be  individual  utterance,  but  merely 
the  adaptation  of  Maeterlinck's  methods  to  the 
heroic  legends  of  Ireland. 

In  his  prose  tales  Sharp  was  actuated  by  almost 
the  same  motives.  He  was  interested  in  all  things 
psychic,  he  held  theories  of  ancestral  memory,  of 
"second  sight,"  of  the  power  of  symbols,  and  these 
interests  dominate  his  work.  Old  legend  and  cu- 
rious folk-belief  were  the  source  of  much  of  his 
writing,  they  were,  in  fact,  the  foundation  upon 
which  he  raised  a  superstructure  of  speculative 


204  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

embroidery  and  delicate  emotional  introspection. 
Each  of  them  is  directed  to  the  evocation  of  a 
definite  emotional  reaction,  but  this  reaction  is 
produced  less  by  the  content  of  the  tale  than  by  the 
manner  of  its  setting  forth.  His  style,  delicate, 
tenuous,  or,  as  he  himself  termed  it,  "mist-laden," 
is  the  most  important  element  in  his  art,  and  is, 
perhaps,  the  cause  for  the  brevity  of  his  fame.  For 
behind  that  fluid  expression  we  feel  that  there  Is 
little  consciously  directed  intelligence;  it  is  prose 
poetry  of  a  very  high  order,  at  its  best,  and  at  its 
worst  it  degenerates  into  mere  toying  with  words 
and  uncontrolled  emotional  vaporing.  This  qual- 
ity of  "fine  writing"  becomes  almost  irritating  in 
some  passages  of  his  work,  especially  since  it  seems 
to  serve  no  essential  purpose  other  than  to  convey 
an  over-sentimentalized  mood. 

In  certain  of  his  tales,  however,  those  partic- 
ularly which  reconstruct  the  ancient  Gaelic  life,  he 
was  more  successful.  "Silk  o'  the  Kine,"  "Enya 
of  the  Dark  Eyes,"  "The  Annir  Choile,"  "The 
Fisher  of  Men"  and  "The  Harping  of  Cravetheen" 
he  reconstructed  and  built  upon  legend  and 
brought  out  a  new  beauty  of  feeling  that  is  dis- 
tinctive of  his  work  at  its  highest  levels.  Like 
Yeats,  he  sought  to  suggest  the  occult,  the  mys- 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    205 

terious,  the  orphic  element  of  Gaelic  life,  and  these 
moods  are  those  which  he  conveys  with  the  great- 
est sureness  and  with  the  most  compelling  beauty. 
Always,  however,  one  feels  the  personal  element, 
the  fact  that  the  eerie,  orphic  quality  inheres  less 
in  the  old  life  that  he  was  trying  to  reconstruct 
than  in  his  own  dream  of  what  that  life  may  have 
been.  In  the  final  analysis  Sharp's  work  indicates 
a  striving  after  beauty  of  mood  for  the  sake  purely 
of  that  beauty.  It  bears  little  relation  to  life,  even 
to  what  he  himself  termed  spiritual  life,  but  it  does 
embody  the  attempt  to  capture  and  to  express  a 
beauty  very  different  from  any  that  had  previously 
graced  English  literature.  The  final  criticism  of 
his  work  is  suggested  in  a  letter  written  to  him  by 
A.  E.:  "You  know  too  that  I  think  that  these 
alluring  visions  and  thoughts  are  of  little  impor- 
tance unless  they  link  themselves  unto  our  hu- 
manity. It  means  only  madness  in  the  end.  I 
know  people  whose  lamps  are  lit  and  they  see 
wonderful  things  but  they  themselves  will  not  pass 
from  vision  into  action.  They  follow  beauty  only 
like  the  dwellers  in  Tyre  whom  Ezekiel  denounced, 
'They  have  corrupted  their  wisdom  by  reason  of 
their  brightness.'  Leaving  these  mystic  things 
aside  what  you  say  about  art  is  quite  true  except 


2o6  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

that  I  cannot  regard  art  as  the  'quintessential 
life'  unless  art  comes  to  mean  the  art  of  living 
more  than  the  art  of  the  artist  is."  ^ 

There  are  three  outstanding  figures  in  the  Irish 
renascence  who  have  employed  the  essay  as  a 
medium  of  expression.  Two  of  them,  A.  E.  and 
Yeats,  are  primarily  poets.  The  third,  "John 
Eglinton"  (W.  K.  Magee),  has  concentrated  all 
his  creative  energy  in  the  production  of  the  three 
slim  volumes  of  prose  that  have  come  from  his 
pen.  Much  of  their  work  has  been  critical,  and 
some  controversial  in  character;  the  chief  contro- 
versy in  which  all  three  have  been  involved  was 
that  arising  from  the  question  as  to  whether  the 
way  of  Irish  literature  should  be  that  of  the  na- 
tional or  of  the  cosmopolitan  spirit.  This  dis- 
cussion, since  it  defined  many  of  the  issues  in  the 
subsequent  literary  activity  of  the  movement, 
has  been  commented  upon  in  the  chapter  on  the 
critical  theories  of  the  renascence. 

The  changing  character  of  A.  E.'s  prose  mirrors 
a  corresponding  change  in  his  interests  and  pre- 
occupations. "As  I  get  older,"  he  writes  in  an 
essay  on  Seumas  O'Sullivan,  "  I  get  more  songless." 

1  "William  Sharp,  A  Memoir,"  by  Elizabeth  Sharp,  Duf- 
field  and  Company,  New  York,  191 2,  Vol.  II,  page  95. 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    207 

The  earlier  dream-tales  such  as  "The  Mask  of 
Apollo"  (1893),  "A  Dream  of  Angus  Oge"  (1897), 
"The  Story  of  a  Star"  (1894)  and  "The  Midnight 
Blossom"  (1894)  are,  like  his  early  poems,  expres- 
sions of  the  adventures  of  his  spirit,  communicat- 
ing the  interior  vision  that  made  him  aware  of 
his  complex  spiritual  life.  The  vision  is  enmeshed 
in  the  net  of  faint  harmonies  and  beautiful  sym- 
bols, complex,  often  a  little  obscure,  since  it  is  in- 
tuition and  emotion,  rather  than  intellectual 
thought,  that  is  seeking  expression.  In  the  two 
essays  on  "The  Renewal  of  Youth"  (1896)  and 
"The  Hero  in  Man"  (1901)  is  implicit  the  com- 
plete statement  of  his  philosophy.  In  them  we 
have  still  the  poet  telling  of  his  spiritual  experi- 
ences, but  finding  also  the  relation  of  these  ex- 
periences to  life.  "Let  us  get  near  to  realities," 
he  writes.  "We  read  too  much.  .  .  .  The  soul  of 
the  modern  mystic  is  becoming  a  mere  hoarding- 
place  for  uncomely  theories." 

And  in  that  essay  on  the  poetry  of  Yeats  which 
he  calls  "A  Poet  of  Shadows"  he  again  voices 
that  feeling.  "We,  all  of  us,  poets,  artists,  and 
musicians,  who  work  in  shadows,  must  sometime 
begin  to  work  in  substance,  and  why  should  we 
grieve  if  one  labor  ends  and  another  begins.''     I 


2o8  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

am  interested  more  in  life  than  in  the  shadows  of 
life,  and  as  Ildathach  grows  fainter  I  await  eagerly 
the  revelation  of  the  real  nature  of  one  who  has 
built  so  many  mansions  in  the  heavens." 

It  was  at  about  this  time  that  Ildathach  grew 
very  faint  in  the  mind  of  A.  E.  He  had  become 
connected  with  the  I.  A.  O.  S.  as  an  organizer  of 
rural  industries,  and  became  the  editor  of  "The 
Irish  Homestead,"  an  agricultural  journal.  The 
spiritualistic  seances  in  the  house  in  Ely  Place 
were  given  up,  he  ceased  to  write  of  his  visions  and 
spiritual  intuitions,  and  began  to  write  about 
pigs,  and  scientific  farming,  cooperative  purchase 
and  distribution,  and  the  new  polity  that  was  to 
arise  in  Ireland.  The  best  journalism  that  is  being 
done  in  England  today  is  the  weekly  article  that 
A.  E.  writes  for  "  The  Irish  Homestead."  He  has 
brought  it  into  the  homes  of  men  who  know  noth- 
ing about  agriculture,  but  who  read  it  for  its 
economic  theory,  or  for  the  social  philosophy  of 
its  editor.  And  he  has  brought  it  into  the  homes 
of  Irish  and  even  of  American  farmers  whose  sole 
interest  lies  in  its  sound  agricultural  doctrine. 
The  change  in  essential  subject  brought  with  it  a 
corresponding  change  in  style.  A.  E.  writes 
simply,  directly,  clearly,  with  a  perfect  control 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    209 

over  his  ideas.  He  has  become,  as  Dublin  cap- 
italists learned  during  the  lockout  of  191 3,  a 
powerful  opponent  in  controversy,  a  brilliant 
satirist,  and  an  analyst  of  distinct  acumen.  He 
no  longer  deals  with  his  spiritual  experiences,  or 
weaves  a  beautiful  texture  of  harmony  from  words. 
He  preaches  the  gospel  of  national  regeneration, 
and  in  "Cooperation  and  Nationality"  this  gospel 
received  its  first  ordered  and  logical  expression. 
The  substance  of  his  theory  of  social  economy  and 
its  effect  upon  Irish  life  will  be  made  clear  in  the 
following  chapter.  It  is  sufficient,  however,  to 
say  that  if  Irish  literature  has  lost  a  poet,  Irish 
life  has  gained  immeasurably  in  acquiring  an  eco- 
nomic and  social  philosopher. 

But  Irish  literature  has  not  wholly  lost  the  poet 
and  mystic.  His  social  theory  is  largely  the 
product  of  his  individual  philosophy,  and  the  poet 
and  essayist  frequently  comes  to  the  surface.  An 
occasional  essay  upon  "Art  and  Literature"  or 
upon  "The  Poetry  of  James  Stephens"  or  the 
other  interests  to  which  he  has  at  various  times 
given  his  heart  reveals  the  fact  that  there  has  been 
no  fundamental  disjunction  between  the  poet  and 
the  philosopher.  If  the  poetry  of  his  more  mature 
years  has  less  of  the  yearning  for  the  infinite,  and 


2IO  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

is  closer  to  the  life  of  his  country  as  he  has  come  to 
know  it  than  that  of  his  youth,  it  is  only  the  re- 
sult of  the  return  upon  life  foreshadowed  in  the 
passages  quoted  above.  A  change  in  manner, 
though  not  in  feeling,  has  likewise  come  into  his 
painting.  His  earliest  pictures  sought  to  express 
the  visions  that,  coming  out  of  nowhere,  brought 
him  into  relation  with  the  larger  spiritual  life  of 
which  he  has  been  the  only  prophet  in  our  con- 
temporary literature.  Today  the  visions  appear 
in  his  painting  less  purely  as  vision  and  veiled  by 
the  beauty  that  he  has  found  in  the  mysterious 
landscape  of  Ireland. 

The  poet  and  the  seer  have  come  forward  only 
recently.  The  poet,  jealous  of  the  honor  of  his 
nation,  proud  in  his  ideals,  out  of  an  austere  faith 
and  flaming  passion  rebuked  a  traducer  of  his 
land.  In  A.  E.'s  "Ulster — ^An  Open  Letter  to 
Rudyard  KipHng"  (191 2),  there  is  the  finest  in- 
vective literature  that  has  appeared  since  Steven- 
son's "Father  Damien."  ^  And  the  seer  wrote, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  "The  Spiritual  Con- 
flict," perhaps  the  most  religious  and   spiritual 

1  Both  "Ulster"  and  "The  Spiritual  Conflict"  are  in- 
cluded in  the  volume  of  A.  E.'s  collected  prose:  "Imagina- 
tions and  Reveries,"  Maunsel  and  Company,  Dublin,  1915. 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    21 1 

contribution  to  the  literature  of  the  Great  War. 
It  has  for  its  thesis  the  following  quotation,which 
might  well  serve  as  a  phrase  epitomizing  the  whole 
content  of  A.  E.'s  work:  "The  universe  exists  for 
the  purpose  of  the  soul." 

William  Butler  Yeats  has  been  the  most  prodigal 
and  the  most  prolific  essayist  of  the  renascence. 
He  has  written  upon  the  art  of  the  theater,  upon 
the  philosophy  of  Shelley's  poetry,  upon  folk-lore, 
upon  magic  and  symbolism,  upon  painting,  upon 
dramatic  diction,  upon  "decadent"  literature, 
upon  Ireland  in  modern  art,  and  upon  other  sub- 
jects too  numerous  to  mention.  Much  of  this 
writing  has  been  done  to  serve  an  immediate  pur- 
pose, to  set  right  a  wrong,  to  clarify  the  ideals  of 
the  literary  workers  of  the  renascence,  or  to  in- 
terpret some  art,  or  writing,  or  philosophy,  which 
had  taken  a  firm  hold  upon  his  imagination.  Much 
of  it,  therefore,  is  merely  temporary  in  its  interest, 
or  valuable  only  as  an  indication  of  his  intellectual 
and  emotional  growth  as  a  critic  and  artist.  Some 
part  of  it  has  expressed  a  great  deal  of  his  philos- 
ophy of  art  and  theory  of  life,  and  that,  for  the 
most  part,  has  already  been  discussed  in  these 
pages.  The  lack  of  humanitarian  sympathy  in 
his  early  work,  which  was  deplored  by  William 


212  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

Larminie,  has  gradually  disappeared,  and  in  his 
later  essays  Yeats  has  begun  to  voice  a  feeling 
that  the  function  of  art  is  to  celebrate  life.  This 
interest  in  what  may  be  called  realism  was  doubt- 
less greatly  influenced  by  the  art  of  Synge,  and  it 
is  something  more  than  coincidence  that  the  fol- 
lowers of  Yeats,  originally  an  idealist  and  a  mys- 
tic, are  realists  in  their  art,  while  the  followers  of 
A.  E.,  who  deserted  poetry  and  mysticism  for 
economic  reform,  are  the  sole  survivors  of  the 
idealistic  philosophy  of  the  movement.  Yeats 
no  longer  hopes  for  a  regenerated  Ireland;  he  has 
said  that  Ireland  has  become,  like  England,  "a 
nation  of  hucksters,  counting  ha'pence  from  a 
greasy  till."  But  the  young  men  of  the  I.  A.  O.  S. 
are  full  of  the  hope  of  an  Ireland  reborn,  and 
gradually  they  have  begun  to  bring  their  dream 
to  realization. 

"John  Eglinton"  and  T.  M.  Kettle  have  much 
in  common.  Both  have  been  at  variance  with 
the  leaders  of  the  renascence  upon  many  points. 
Both  are  cosmopolitan  in  their  interests  and  in 
their  theories,  both  believe  that  Ireland  will  be- 
come Ireland  only  by  becoming  European.  The 
latter  is  a  politician,  a  sociologist,  and  a  man  of 
letters.     He  has   lately   been   the   author,   with 


THE  NOVEL,  FOLK-LORE,  AND  OTHER  PROSE    213 

Stephen  Gwynn,  of  "Songs  of  the  Irish  Brigade." 
His  essays,  collected  in  a  volume  entitled  "The 
Day's  Burden"  (1910),  deal  with  politics,  litera- 
ture and  economics,  and  include  the  first  study 
of  the  work  of  Otto  Effertz,  the  syndicalist,  to  be 
written  in  English. 

"John  Eglinton"  has  concerned  himself  less 
with  problems  distinctively  social  or  distinctively 
literary  than  with  the  discussion  of  ideas  from  a 
philosophic  standpoint.  He  has  been  the  one 
writer  of  the  renascence  to  advocate  the  employ- 
ment of  philosophic  criticism  in  relation  to  its 
problems,  and  he  has  stood  always  for  clear  think- 
ing rather  than  for  obscure  emotionalism.  Pecu- 
liarly enough,  he  is,  if  we  define  his  philosophic 
outlook,  a  mystic.  But  he  has  proven  himself 
the  most  logically  analytical  thinker  that  the 
movement  in  Ireland  has  produced.  His  prose, 
being  the  expression  of  an  acute  intelligence,  is 
clear,  penetrating,  and  brilliant.  Moreover,  it 
does  not  lack  the  beauty  of  phrasing  and  the  grace 
of  manner  that  one  looks  for  in  all  contemporary 
Irish  writing.  Its  beauties  are  concealed  by  the 
ruggedness  with  which  it  parallels  his  thought, 
but  the  "Two  Essays  on  the  Remnant"  (1896) 
and    "Pebbles   from   a    Brook"    (1901)    contain 


214  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

some  of  the  finest  writing,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  expression,  that  has  been  done  in  contemporary 
letters.  Yeats  pointed  out  that  the  first  men- 
tioned possessed  unusual  "orchestral  harmonies." 
They  do.  But  the  fundamentally  important 
thing  about  "John  Eglinton's"  writing  as  a  whole 
is  not  its  "style,"  but  the  ideas  to  which  it  has 
given  expression.  For  these  the  readers  must 
go  to  his  books.  And  they  are  among  the  really 
valuable  contributions  to  modern  thought. 


CHAPTER  VI 

MOVEMENTS  FOR  SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM. 
HOME  RULE,  SINN  FEIN,  THE  IRISH  VOLUN- 
TEERS, THE  REBELLION 

THE  two  chief  movements  for  social  and  eco- 
nomic reform  in  Ireland,  the  Gaelic  League 
and  the  Irish  Agricultural  Organization  Society, 
although  absolutely  distinct  from  each  other,  are 
possessed  fundamentally  of  a  common  aim,  the 
regeneration  of  Irish  life.  The  Gaelic  League 
has  striven  for  the  preservation  and  rehabilita- 
tion of  national  culture  on  the  basis  of  language; 
the  cooperative  movement  has  attempted,  by 
applying  sound  social  and  economic  doctrine  to 
the  problems  of  agricultural  life,  a  regeneration 
that  in  its  methods  and  in  its  results  has  been  no 
less  spiritual  than  material. 

The  Gaelic  League  was  founded  in  1893  by  Dr. 
Douglas  Hyde  with  the  assistance  of  Father 
Eugene  O'Growney,  David  Comyn,  O'Neill  Rus- 
sell and  John  MacNeill.  At  the  outset  the 
League  disclaimed  any  religious  or  political  predi- 

215 


2l6  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

lections;  its  sole  objects  were  the  preservation  of 
Irish  as  the  racial  language,  the  study  of  ancient 
Irish  literature,  and  the  creation  of  a  modern 
literature  in  modern  Irish.  The  League  at  first 
met  with  great  opposition  from  those  who  felt 
that  it  would  tend  to  foster  differences  between 
Ireland  and  England  and  foment  a  propaganda 
for  home  rule.  It  soon  became  obvious  that  the 
League  was  entirely  without  the  sphere  of  reli- 
gious or  political  controversy,  for  Orangemen  and 
Nationalists,  Catholic  and  Protestant  met  and 
worked  together  at  the  reconstitution  of  the  Irish 
language  in  perfect  amity.  Conditions  were 
hardly  favorable  to  the  propaganda  instituted  by 
Dr.  Hyde.  In  the  west,  where  a  remnant  of  the 
population  employed  Irish  colloquially,  the  lan- 
guage had  been  sinking  into  disrepute;  it  had,  to  a 
very  great  extent,  been  banished  from  the  schools, 
and  even  where  it  had  not  been  omitted  from  the 
educational  program  the  conditions  imposed  had 
made  it  impossible  to  attract  many  students. 
The  League  realized  that  it  was  immediately 
necessary  to  preserve  the  use  of  Irish  in  the  dis- 
tricts where  it  was  still  spoken,  for  a  dead  language 
cannot  possibly  be  revived.  It  therefore  chose 
the  western  counties  as  a  primary  field,  and  grad- 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         217 

ually  organized  classes  throughout  the  country. 
These  classes  drew  their  recruits  chiefly  from  the 
artisans  and  peasants;  the  League  grew  by  leaps 
and  bounds,  forming  classes  in  England,  and 
branches  in  the  United  States  and  in  South  Amer- 
ica. Local,  provincial,  and  national  festivals  and 
competitions  were  organized,  in  which  prizes  were 
awarded  for  recitation,  singing,  dancing,  literary 
production,  and  musical  composition.  The 
League  undertook  to  publish  Irish  literature  in 
the  Irish  language,  and  possesses  two  periodical 
organs,  "An  Claldeamh  Soluis"  and  "Irisleabhar 
na  Gaedhllge."  There  have  been  off-shoots  from 
the  parent  society,  such  as  Inghinidhe  na  hEireann 
(The  Daughters  of  Erin)  and  the  political  separatist 
league,  Cuman  na  nGaedheal.  It  has  also  forced 
the  adoption  of  Irish  into  the  curriculum  of  the 
schools  under  certain  conditions,  founded  a  school 
for  higher  Celtic  study,  and  has  played  an  impor- 
tant role  in  the  struggle  with  Trinity  College  for 
the  foundation  of  a  national  university  under  the 
control  of  Irish  scholars,  as  it  has  in  the  constant 
wrangle  over  the  composition  of  the  school  boards. 
Until  very  recently  political  considerations  were 
absent  in  the  League;  political  jobbery,  however, 
finally  entered,  and  Dr.  Hyde  was  forced  from  the 


21 8  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

presidency.  Just  what  the  future  will  bring  it  is 
difficult  to  say.  What  the  League  has  done,  how- 
ever, is  to  reconstitute  Irish  as  a  living,  and  in  part 
as  a  national,  language,  to  revive  the  study  of  na- 
tional literature,  and  to  produce  a  literature  in  mod- 
ern Irish.  It  has  revived  some  of  the  ancient  com- 
munal arts  and  sports,  and  thus  in  a  measure  be- 
gun the  reconstruction  of  social  life.  In  so  doing 
it  has  exerted  a  profound  influence  upon  the  con- 
temporary renascence  in  Ireland,  not  only  in 
literature,  the  arts,  and  political  thought,  but  in 
the  crystallization  of  a  social  consciousness. 

The  cooperative  movement  in  agriculture,  as 
the  I.  A.  O.  S.  is  generally  known,  has  established 
reforms  of  a  more  widely  extended  character  and 
of  far  greater  material  importance  in  their  social 
and  economic  aspect  than  those  of  any  other  con- 
structive agency  in  Ireland.  The  movement 
owes  its  inception  and  its  fundamental  direction 
to  the  vision  and  to  the  energy  of  one  man,  Sir 
Horace  Plunkett.  Horace  Plunkett — he  had  not 
then  received  his  title — had  been  a  rancher  in  the 
western  United  States,  chiefly  in  Nebraska,  for 
ten  years  when,  in  1889,  he  returned  to  Ireland 
for  a  visit.  He  was  a  man  of  independent  means, 
a  member  of  the  Dunsany  family,  a  Protestant 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         219 

and  a  unionist  in  politics,  a  successful  man  of 
affairs,  and  the  possessor  of  many  interests  in  the 
United  States  which  he  still  retains,  and  to  which 
he  pays  an  annual  visit  of  inspection.  In  the 
States  he  had  witnessed  the  tendency  toward  in- 
dustrial combination  whereby  many  small  indus- 
trial units,  unsuccessful  in  their  mutual  competi- 
tion, had  combined,  eliminated  useless  waste,  and 
in  their  new  capacity  had  become  economically 
successful.  When  he  returned  to  Ireland  he 
found  a  nation  of  small  farmers,  unsatisfactory 
conditions  of  land  tenure,  primitive  methods  of 
agriculture,  a  rate  of  emigration  that  threatened 
to  drain  the  land  completely,  widespread  poverty 
and  indebtedness,  and  few  returns  from  the  energy 
expended  upon  the  land.  He  found  the  govern- 
ment constantly  appealed  to  for  aid,  but  doing 
little  beyond  the  periodical  appointment  of  boards 
of  inquiry  into  the  various  phases  of  agricultural 
discontent,  and  occasionally  applying  various 
remedies  that  seemed  never  to  alleviate  the  suf- 
fering of  the  farmers.  He  found  the  farmers 
almost  constantly  laboring  under  a  burden  of 
debt  to  the  "gombeen  man,"  as  the  Irish  call  the 
local  usurer.  The  gombeen  man  was  usually  the 
local   storekeeper,   and   often   the   local   political 


220  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

boss.  Indebtedness  to  him  meant  continual  pur- 
chase from  him  of  the  necessaries  of  life  at  a 
greatly  enhanced  value,  and  the  sale  to  him  of 
whatever  agricultural  products  he  chose  to  buy 
at  a  constantly  diminishing  rate,  so  that  the  bur- 
den of  debt  invariably  increased,  and  the  farm,  no 
matter  how  good  the  crops,  was  forever  run  at  a 
loss.  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  saw  these  conditions 
which  had  obtained  almost  everywhere  in  Ireland 
since  the  time  of  the  great  famine,  but  not  con- 
tent with  mere  lamentation,  he  determined  that 
they  should  be  rectified,  without  government  aid, 
by  the  farmers  themselves.  He  was  in  no  sense 
a  trained  economist  nor  a  specialist  in  agriculture, 
but  he  had  vision  and  an  infinite  persuasion  with 
which  to  expound  it.  The  first  people  whom  he 
persuaded  were  R.  A.  Anderson,  who  was  then 
the  supervisor  of  the  tenants  of  Lord  Castledown, 
and  Father  Thomas  Finlay,  a  young  Jesuit  priest 
who  had  studied  in  Germany.  The  three  of 
them  set  to  work  spreading  the  gospel  of  coopera- 
tion. By  1894  the  movement  had  become  too 
large  to  be  successfully  carried  further  by  indi- 
viduals, and  the  Irish  Agricultural  Organization 
Society  was  formed.  Opposition  was  not  lacking, 
chiefly  on  the  part  of  the  gombeen  men,  who  or- 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         221 

ganized  for  self  protection  and  entrusted  their 
political  interests  to  T.  W.  Russell.  In  1897  the 
I.  A.  0.  S.  required  the  services  of  an  additional 
organizer,  and  Sir  Horace  asked  William  Butler 
Yeats  whether  he  knew  of  anyone  for  the  posi- 
tion. Yeats  spoke  of  a  mystic  poet,  who  had 
addressed  the  Sunday  crowds  at  Bray  Head,  who 
was  deeply  versed  in  the  lore  of  mysticism,  and 
the  leader  of  the  Hermetic  Society,  but  who  also 
happened  to  be  an  accountant  at  Pirn's  in  Dublin. 
The  visionary  whom  he  recommended  had  pub- 
lished poetry  and  prose  in  various  magazines  un- 
der the  pseudonym  of  A.  E.  Luckily,  Sir  Horace 
persuaded  A.  E.  into  the  movement,  and  sent  him 
off  touring  the  country  on  his  bicycle  as  an  organ- 
izer for  the  society.  After  a  few  years  of  organ- 
izing, he  was  appointed  assistant  secretary,  and 
in  1905  became  editor  of  "  The  Irish  Homestead," 
tlie  official  organ  of  the  I.  A.  O.  S.  This  little 
excursus  into  the  history  of  the  society  is  pre- 
requisite to  any  discussion  of  its  fundamental 
ideas  because  although  cooperation,  as  a  practical 
issue,  was  the  idea  of  Sir  Horace  Plunkett,  the 
superstructure  of  a  social  philosophy  has  been 
raised  by  A.  E.* 

'Three  books  are  especially  valuable  in  explanation  of 


222  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

The  remedy  that  Sir  Horace  proposed  seemed 
so  simple  that  the  majority  of  people  laughed  at 
it.  Agriculture,  he  held,  is  a  science,  an  indus- 
try, and  a  life.  His  slogan  was  "Better  farming, 
better  business,  better  living."  Stripped  to  its 
bare  essentials,  his  plan  was  that  the  Irish  farmers 
should  combine  to  their  own  advantage.  The 
small  farmer,  competing  with  his  neighbor,  is 
always  at  a  disadvantage.  He  cannot  buy  ex- 
pensive machinery,  his  credit  is  bad,  he  knows 
little  about  the  modern  scientific  methods  of 
agrarian  industry.  Such  was  the  condition  of 
the  average  Irish  farmer  when  Sir  Horace  began 
the  cooperative  campaign.  He  showed  them 
how  it  was  possible,  by  combining  and  cooperat- 
ing, to  purchase  the  requisite  expensive  machinery 
for  the  use  of  the  community,  to  buy  supplies, 
also  for  the  use  of  the  community,  at  wholesale 
rates,  to  sell  his  products,  in  combination  with 
those  of  his  neighbors,  at  retail  prices,  since  in 
combination  a  group  of  farmers  could  themselves 

the  cooperative  movement:  "Ireland  in  the  New  Century," 
by  Sir  Horace  Plunkett,  Macmillan;  "Cooperation  and 
Nationality,"  by  George  W.  Russell  (A.  E.),  Maunsel  and 
Co.  Ltd.,  Dublin,  1912;  and  "The  United  Irishwomen,  Their 
Place,  Work  and  Ideals,"  by  Horace  Plunkett,  Ellice  Piik- 
ington,  and  A.  £.,  Maunsel,  191 2. 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         223 

regulate  the  selling  price.  He  also  showed  them 
that,  although  their  individual  credit  was  bad,  as 
a  community  cooperating  for  the  benefit  of  all 
their  members,  their  credit  was  good.  He  in- 
augurated credit  societies,  RaiflFeisen  Banks,  agri- 
cultural societies,  poultry  societies,  home  industry 
societies,  and  various  miscellaneous  groups,  such 
as  those  of  the  bee-keepers,  the  flax-growers, 
and  the  bacon-curers.  He  also  formed  the  Irish 
Agricultural  Wholesale  Society,  which  is  respon- 
sible for  the  distribution  of  products,  and  another 
society  which  purchases  machinery  for  the  co- 
operative associations.  This  was  "Better  busi- 
ness." But  "Better  farming"  was  the  primary 
factor  in  his  program.  This,  too,  was  accom- 
plished. A  group  of  agricultural  experts  were 
impressed  into  the  service  of  the  society,  studies 
were  made  of  the  most  modern  methods  of  agri- 
culture, and  the  knowledge  obtained  was  dissem- 
inated among  the  farmers  by  itinerant  teachers 
and  organizers.  AH  this  work  was  undertaken 
by  the  various  societies  acting  through  the  central 
controlling  agency  of  the  I.  A.  O.  S. 

Statistics  seldom  make  Interesting  reading. 
But  the  statistics  of  the  I.  A.  O.  S.  convey,  in 
concrete  form,  some  impression  of  the  results  of 


224  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

their  labors.^  During  the  first  year  of  its  opera- 
tion, the  single  cooperative  society  did  a  total 
business  of  $21,815.00.  The  statistics  for  1913 
have  been  computed  as  follows. 

Societies        Number  Membership  Business 
Dairy 

(Creameries) 34I--  •  •  41,106..  .  .$12,623,105.00 

Auxiliary 89 

Agricultural I93-  •  •  •  I9j97o.  .  .  .        881,505.00 

Credit 235..  .  .  20,211..  .  .        276,451.00 

Poultry 18. .  .  .  5,294, .  .  .        241,680.00 

Home  Industries. ..  .  18....  1,212....  15,105.00 
Miscellaneous 

(bees,  bacon 

etc.) 27. .  .  .  9,492. .  .  .        684,085.00 

Pig  and  Cattle 

Supply 52 1,730 

Flax 10....  406....            5,015.00 

Federations 2. .  .  .  231. ..  .      1,935,990.00 

Totals 895. .  .  .  104,702. .  .  .  $16,665,990.00 

In  conjunction  with  these  figures  one  may  read 
the  following  account  of  the  work  of  the  I.  A.  O.  S. 
by  A.  E.:  "The  dairy  societies  have  released  the 
farmer  from  the  bondage  to  the  butter  merchant 
and  proprietor,  and  given  back  to  him  the  control 

^  These  statistics  are  quoted  from  an  article  on  "The 
Farmer's  Fight — The  Example  of  the  Irish  Farmers,"  by 
Charles  Edward  Russell,  in  "Pearson's  Magazine,"  for  Sep- 
tember, 1915. 


SOCIAL  AND  ECX)NOMIC  REFORM         225 

of  the  processes  of  manufacture  and  sale.  In 
the  credit  societies  farmers  join  together,  and, 
creating  by  their  union  a  greater  security  than 
any  of  them  could  offer  individually,  they  are  able 
to  get  money  to  finance  their  farming  operations 
at  very  low  rates.  The  joint  stock  banks  lend 
money  to  these  societies  on  wholesale  terms, 
letting  them  retail  it  again  among  their  members. 
Generally  speaking,  it  has  been  found  possible 
to  borrow  money  at  from  three  to  four  per  cent, 
and  to  lend  it  for  productive  purposes  at  the  pop- 
ular rate  of  one  penny  a  month  for  every  pound 
employed.  The  trust  auctioneer's  methods,  the 
gombeen  man's  methods,  cannot  stand  this  com- 
petition. The  poultry  societies  collect  the  eggs 
of  their  members,  they  grade  and  pack  them 
properly,  and  market  them  through  their  own 
agencies.  The  flax  societies  erect  or  hire  scutch 
mills  and  see  that  the  important  work  of  scutch- 
ing the  flax  is  performed  with  the  requisite  care. 
The  agricultural  societies  purchase  seeds,  imple- 
ments, fertilizers,  feeding  stuffs,  and  agricultural 
requirements  for  their  members.  Many  of  them 
hold  thousands  of  pounds'  worth  of  machinery  too 
expensive  for  the  individual  farmer  to  buy.  The 
societies    buy    their    requirements    at    wholesale 


226  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

prices  and  insure  good  quality.  The  home  in- 
dustries' societies  have  made  hopeful  beginnings 
with  lace,  crochet,  embroidery  and  rug-making  to 
provide  work  for  country  girls.  .  .  .  The  so- 
cieties in  Ireland  are  losing  their  specialized  char- 
acter, their  limitation  of  objects  to  this  purpose 
or  that,  and  are  more  and  more  assuming  a  char- 
acter which  can  only  be  described  by  calling 
them  general  purposes'  societies.  The  successful 
dairy  society  begins  to  take  up  the  work  of  an 
agricultural,  poultry  or  credit  society  in  addition 
to  the  work  for  which  the  farmers  were  originally 
organized  in  the  district.  It  is  gradually  absorb- 
ing into  one  large  well  managed  association  all 
the  rural  business  connected  with  agriculture  in 
each  parish.  The  societies  are  controlled  by  com- 
mittees elected  by  the  members,  and  in  a  decade 
or  so,  instead  of  the  dislocation  and  separation 
of  interests  which  has  been  so  disastrous  in  its 
effects,  instead  of  innumerable  petty  businesses 
all  striving  for  their  own  rather  than  for  the  gen- 
eral welfare,  there  will  be  in  each  parish  one  large 
association  able  to  pay  well  for  expert  manage- 
ment, with  complete  control  over  all  processes  of 
purchase,  manufacture  and  sale,  and  run  by  the 
farmers  with  the  energy  of  self  interest.     These 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         227 

district  associations  are  rapidly  linking  themselves 
on  to  large  federations  for  purohase  and  sale,  which 
again  are  controlled  by  representatives  of  the  so- 
cieties, and  through  these  the  farmers  are  able  to 
act  powerfully  in  the  market.  They  become  their 
own  middlemen.  All  the  links  between  produc- 
tion on  the  farm  and  sale  to  the  consumer  are 
controlled  by  the  agriculturist.  These  societies, 
their  federations,  and  the  I.  A.  O.  S.  form  the 
nucleus\  and  a  very  strong  nucleus,  for  a  vast 
farmers*  trade  union,  ready  to  protect  their  in- 
terests, to  help  them  socially,  politically,  and 
economically." 

What,  then,  of  the  final  words  of  Sir  Horace 
Plunkett's  slogan,  "Better  living".''  He  himself 
has  written  thus:  "Both  the  practice  and  the 
business  of  farming  have  been  revolutionized  by 
bringing  science  into  the  one  and  modern  business 
methods — chiefly  methods  of  combination — into 
the  other.  The  country  workers  must  do  with 
their  industry  and  with  its  business  just  what  the 
town  workers  have  been  forced  to  do  with  theirs. 
And  when  all  this  is  done,  if  the  domestic  and  so- 
cial life  of  the  country  does  not  advance  with  its 
economic  life,  all  but  the  dullards  will  fly  to  the 
town."     That   phase   of   the   program   has   been 


228  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

undertaken  by  the  United  Irishwomen,  an  asso- 
ciation similar  to  the  I.  A.  O.  S.,  and  represented 
therein,  which  organizes  the  social  life  of  the  rural 
communities.  It  is  cooperative,  and  its  work  is 
not  that  of  a  benevolent  autocracy,  nor  that  of  a 
superior  power  charitably  inclined,  but  it  is  con- 
ceived and  carried  out  by  the  women  of  the  new 
rural  civilization  themselves.  It  devotes  itself 
to  agricultural  industries,  to  domestic  economy, 
to  social  and  intellectual  development.  It  brings 
to  the  rural  communities  things  as  far  apart  as  the 
latest  methods  of  accounting  and  the  latest  theories 
of  community  sanitation.  It  organizes  lectures 
clubs,  community  halls  wherein  community  fes- 
tivities take  place,  district  nursing,  concerts, 
education,  and  home  industries.  It  does  this  not 
impersonally,  but  with  an  absolute  personal  con- 
nection with  the  community,  for  the  associated 
communities  give  it  its  life.  And  in  doing  so  it  is 
working  out  a  social  philosophy  not  even  hoped 
for  by  the  founder  of  the  movement  at  its  incep- 
tion, twenty-six  years  ago. 

This  is  the  social  economy  of  A.  E.  as  it  is  being 
realized  in  Ireland  today.  He  it  was  who  saw 
that  if  Ireland  was  to  have  a  national  life,  that 
life  must  be  of  its  own  creation.     He  saw  the 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         229 

futility  of  governmental  regulation,  the  huge  im- 
personality of  legislative  enactment  superimposed 
upon  a  people  by  a  body  of  men  with  no  knowledge 
of  actually  existing  conditions.  He  saw  that  so- 
ciety, and  particularly  rural  society,  did  not  exist 
when  the  Land  Acts  provided  for  tenant  purchase. 
He  knew  that  such  a  social  order  must  necessarily 
be  built  up,  and  he  threw  his  force  into  the  co- 
operative movement.  It  has  been  a  bloodless 
revolution,  but  a  revolution  nevertheless.  Out 
of  a  nation  of  farmers  whose  relation  to  the  holders 
of  the  land.  In  1889,  was  that  of  the  feudal  serf 
to  his  overlord,  he  has  witnessed  the  crystalliza- 
tion of  a  nation  of  farmers  combined  and  cooperat- 
ing, successful,  happy,  developing  a  civilization 
and  a  nationality  of  their  own.  "Nature,"  he  has 
written,  "has  no  Intention  of  allowing  her  divine 
brood,  made  In  the  image  of  Deity,  to  dwindle 
away  Into  a  crew  of  little,  feeble,  feverish  city  folk. 
She  has  other  and  more  grandiose  futures  before 
humanity  If  ancient  prophecy  and  our  deepest, 
most  spiritual,  Intuitions  have  any  truth  in  them." 
Therefore  he  has  fulfilled  his  vision  by  laying  the 
foundations  of  a  rural  civilization  and  a  nationality 
upon  the  bed-rock  of  communal  effort  and  com- 
munal  consciousness. 


230  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

The  government,  however,  had  not  been  inac- 
tive in  the  meanwhile.  Its  social  and  economic 
program  for  Ireland  involved  three  distinct 
phases.  First  in  importance  was  the  Land  Pur- 
chase Act,  second,  the  relief  of  conditions  in  the 
"congested  districts,"  which  is  really  a  special 
problem  connected  with  land  tenure,  and  finally, 
the  creation  of  a  Department  of  Agriculture  and 
Technical  Instruction. 

The  earliest  land  purchase  act  was  that  drafted 
by  Lord  Ashbourne,  and  passed  in  1885.  It  pro- 
vided that  if  any  landlord  wished  to  sell  his  estate 
to  his  tenants,  the  Imperial  Treasury  would  ad- 
vance the  whole  of  the  purchase  money  upon 
certain  guarantees,  the  purchaser  to  repay  the 
amount  in  forty-nine  annuities,  each  equal  to  four 
per  cent,  of  the  purchase  price.  Such  agreements 
were  binding  only  when  ratified  by  the  Land 
Commission.  The  government  appropriated  ten 
millions  of  pounds  to  the  promulgation  of  the  act. 
In  1891,  and  again  in  1896,  the  money  appro- 
priated was  exhausted  and  new  acts  were  passed. 
That  of  1891  complicated  the  machinery  of  pur- 
chase, and  the  following  act  was  no  great  improve- 
ment. These  acts  stemmed  the  tide  of  purchase, 
and  in  1903  it  was  deemed  necessary  to  provide 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         231 

further  incentive.  The  result  was  the  Wyndham 
Act,  prepared  by  the  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland, 
which  provided  for  an  optional  land  purchase  of 
all  estates,  whether  entailed  or  not,  whose  pro- 
prietors desired  to  sell,  the  estate  to  be  sold  as  a 
whole  to  tenants  acting  cooperatively.  All  trans- 
actions are  under  the  control  of  the  Estates  Com- 
missioners, who  must  pass  upon  each  case  without 
comment  if  the  contracting  parties  agree  to  fix 
the  purchase  price  within  certain  "zones."  The 
tenant,  although  paying  a  smaller  annuity  under 
this  system,  must  continue  paying  for  a  longer 
duration  of  time.  The  Commissioners  can  buy 
estates  with  a  view  to  resale,  especially  if  these 
estates  are  what  is  known  as  "congested."  The 
expenses  of  operating  the  act  are  almost  entirely 
charged  against  Irish  funds. 

The  "congested  districts"  are  chiefly  in  the 
west,  Connemara,  Connaught,  and  Kerry.  They 
are  a  survival  of  the  clearances  which  took  place 
after  the  great  famine,  and  the  institution  of  graz- 
ing in  what  formerly  had  been  land  cultivated  by 
tenant  farmers.  Excessive  subdivisions  and  the 
turning  of  the  land  over  to  grazing  have  been 
responsible  for  this  "congestion."  A  "congested 
district"  is  one  in  which  most  of  the  good  land  is 


232  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

given  over  to  grazing,  and  the  barren  soil  that  re- 
mains is  allotted  in  infinitely  small  holdings  to  the 
tenants,  who  live  in  mud  hovels,  and  whose  hold- 
ings are  "uneconomic"  in  that  they  do  not  produce 
enough  to  support  life.  To  remedy  this  condition 
the  Board  was  formed  and  voted  a  grant  of  money. 
It  buys  estates,  erects  cottages,  and  allots  the  land 
in  economic  holdings  to  the  tenants  who  purchase 
it.  It  encourages  the  fishing  industry,  and  relieves 
the  congestion  by  renioving  tenants  to  other  por- 
tions of  the  countr)'-  where  vacant  land  is  available. 
It  works  in  conjunction  with  the  I.  A.  0.  S.  and 
with  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  and  it  sub- 
sidizes industries  in  the  process  of  formation.  It 
has,  however,  no  power  of  compulsory  expropria- 
tion of  the  landlord,  which  is  the  greatest  hindrance 
to  land  reform  in  Ireland. 

The  Department  of  Agriculture  and  Technical 
Instruction  owes  its  inception  to  Sir  Horace 
Plunkett,  who  in  1895,  as  a  member  of  Parliament, 
formed  a  "Recess  Committee"  which  occupied 
itself  with  an  inquiry  as  to  the  best  methods  of 
state  aid  to  agricultural  industries  obtaining  in 
other  countries.  Their  report  formed  the  basis  of 
an  act  passed  in  1899,  which  established  the  de- 
partment, with  Sir  Horace  at  its  head.    It  received 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         233 

a  grant  of  two  hundred  thousand  pounds  capital, 
and  an  annual  income  of  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
six  thousand  pounds  which,  with  the  exception  of 
five  thousand  pounds,  is  drawn  from  Irish  sources. 
Its  purpose  was  to  develop  agriculture,  and  to 
furnish  technical  instruction  in  agriculture  and 
related  industries.  It  took  over  the  management 
of  the  Royal  College  of  Science,  the  Metropolitan 
School  of  Art,  and  the  Science  and  Art  Museum  in 
Dublin.  It  opened  various  schools  and  agricul- 
tural stations  throughout  the  country.  It  sub- 
sidized the  I.  A.  O.  S.,  to  which  Sir  Horace  gave 
his  salary,  and  it  cooperated  with  local  authorities 
throughout  Ireland  in  its  program  of  economic 
reform.  But  seven  years  after  Its  constitution,  a 
change  in  party  removed  Sir  Horace  from  his 
position  as  Vice  President,  and  the  new  incumbent, 
Mr.  T.  W.  Russell,  the  supporter  of  the  gombeen 
men  and  a  foe  to  the  cooperative  movement,  re- 
duced the  grant  to  the  I.  A.  O.  S.,  and  weakened 
the  efficiency  of  the  department  as  a  constructive 
force  in  Irish  economic  life.  It  does,  however, 
through  its  itinerant  teachers,  through  its  bulletins 
and  the  work  of  its  agricultural  and  technical 
experts,  influence  reform  in  Ireland. 

These  five  agencies  have  to  a  very  great  extent 


234  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

revived  the  economic  life  of  Ireland  and  estab- 
lished it  upon  a  firm  foundation.  The  chief  con- 
cern of  the  government  has  been  the  land  question, 
since  organized  opposition  has  concentrated  with 
greater  frequency  upon  that  than  upon  any  other 
phase  of  the  situation  in  Ireland.  And  for  such 
concentration  there  has  been  good  cause.  With 
the  exception  of  Belfast  and  the  district  imme- 
diately surrounding  it,  Ireland  is  primarily  an 
agricultural  nation.  It  has  always  been  a  nation 
of  small  farmers.  Had  these  small  farmers  pos- 
sessed the  absolute  control  of  their  land,  self 
interest  would  have  led  to  its  cultivation,  to  the 
erection  of  homes,  and  to  the  investment  of  what- 
ever capital  they  had  in  improvements  of  a  repro- 
ductive nature  the  benefits  of  which  would  have 
been  guaranteed  to  them  by  the  permanence  of 
their  tenure.  This,  however,  has  never  been  the 
case.  The  curse  of  absentee  landlordism  held  the 
greater  part  of  Ireland  in  its  grip,  the  rights  of  the 
landlord  in  the  summary  eviction  of  tenants  for 
non-payment  of  rent,  the  provision  that  improve- 
ments of  whatever  nature  became  the  property  of 
the  landlord  without  compensation  to  the  evicted 
tenant,  the  insecurity  of  tenure  even  where  the 
rent  was  promptly  met,  the  difficulty  for  all  these 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         235 

reasons  of  obtaining  credit,  the  average  high  rate  of 
rent  and  the  primitive  methods  of  agriculture  em- 
ployed all  combined  not  only  to  deprive  the 
peasantry  of  all  ambition,  but  to  make  any  sound 
rural  economy  impossible  for  them.  After  the 
great  famine,  and  the  clearances,  the  situation  be- 
came still  more  acute,  and  after  the  evictions  of 
1879,  ^^  agrarian  rebellion  broke  out  which  con- 
tinued sporadically  for  thirteen  years.  The  Land 
League,  and  its  successor,  the  Ladies'  Land 
League,  inaugurated  a  campaign  of  retaliation 
which  began  with  a  boycott  and  ended  with  the 
anarchy  and  terror  spread  by  the  "Ribbonmen" 
and  "Moonlighters."  In  the  meanwhile,  the 
economic  difficulty  had  become  a  political  issue, 
and  as  is  usually  the  case  under  such  circumstances, 
had  in  no  wise  been  solved.  Finally  Gladstone 
influenced  legislative  enactment  which  provided 
for  a  complicated  and  expensive  judicial  ma- 
chinery to  determine  tenant  rights.  A  policy  of 
"dual  ownership"  came  into  being,  whereby  the 
landlord  actually  retained  possession  of  the  land, 
while  the  tenant  was  invested  with  certain  rights 
which  he  might  sell  or  otherwise  dispose  oL  Fixity 
of  tenure,  however,  was  not  guaranteed  him,  al- 
though he  came  into  possession  of  the  other  two 


236  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

rights  for  which  there  had  been  so  much  agitation, 
fair  rent,  and  free  sale.  The  system  of  dual  owner- 
ship, however,  proved  to  be  an  uneconomic  solu- 
tion, for  the  landlord  refused  to  invest  capital  in  his 
estates,  desiring  merely  to  draw  his  rents  from 
them,  and  the  tenant  refused  to  make  the  neces^ 
sary  improvements  lest  the  rent  be  raised  after  he 
had  done  so  because  of  the  increased  value  of  the 
land.  Moreover,  the  force  of  competition  exerted 
itself  in  the  purchase  of  tenant  rights,  the  right  to 
occupation  of  the  land,  and  because  of  certain 
peculiar  provisions  of  the  legislation,  the  peasant 
found  himself  in  the  position  of  having  to  pay 
many  times  the  actual  rental  value  of  the  land  in 
order  to  occupy  it  and  pay  rent  to  the  landlord  for 
the  privilege. 

Ireland  still  looked  to  the  government  for  a 
solution  of  its  difficulties,  however,  and  a  partial 
solution  was  effected,  not  without  criticism,  by  the 
various  land  purchase  acts.  These  in  theory 
effected  the  transfer  of  the  land  from  the  aristoc- 
racy to  the  peasantry,  and  such  a  transfer  has  been 
inaugurated  in  practice.  A  corresponding  transfer 
of  political  power  was  effected  by  Gerald  Bal- 
four's Local  Government  Act,  passed  in  1898. 
This  provided  for  a  general  reform  in  local  adminis- 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         237 

tration,  placing  it  in  the  hands  of  the  county 
councils,  who  are  elected  by  a  wide  franchise  to 
which  women  are  admitted,  but  clergymen  ex- 
cluded. The  county  councils  can  send  delegates  to 
the  general  council  of  county  councils,  which  has 
little  power  of  any  nature,  and  is  supervised  by  the 
Local  Government  Board,  controlled  by  the  Castle. 
The  effect  of  all  this  legislation  has  been  to 
destroy  the  old  rural  social  and  economic  systems. 
The  transfer  of  the  land  to  the  peasant  disposed  of 
the  old  economic  relation  between  tenant  and 
landlord,  and  the  transfer  of  political  power  ef- 
fected a  change  in  the  proportional  weight  of  class 
influence,  so  that  the  peasant  found  himself  in  the 
position  of  a  landowner  with  certain  political 
powers  and  duties  directly  devolving  upon  him. 
And  he  found  himself  in  this  position  without  any 
previous  experience  in  either  his  new  economic  or 
political  capacity.  If  the  small  agriculturalist  was 
to  remain,  economically,  an  individualist,  capital 
was  an  immediate  requisite.  This  the  purchaser 
of  land  did  not  often  possess,  and  if  outside  capital 
were  called  in,  the  probable  result  would  have 
been  the  creation  of  a  trust,  and  the  peasant  would 
have  been  In  no  better  condition  than  before.  The 
middleman,  who  had  operated  against  the  farmer 


238  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

while  he  was  yet  a  tenant,  could  operate  against 
him  in  the  same  fashion  now  that  he  was  a  pro- 
prietor. What  was  urgently  necessary  was  the 
creation  of  a  new  social  and  economic  system,  and 
this  the  cooperative  movement  undertook.  It 
has  carried  it  through  successfully  both  with  the 
aid  of  the  state  and  without  that  aid.  And  today, 
as  has  been  said,  a  new  social  order  and  a  new 
national  life  is  coming  into  being  in  Ireland.  And 
this  has  its  basis  in  a  new  kind  of  rural  civilization, 
in  which  Ireland  has  become  the  world's  teacher. 
The  political  history  of  Ireland  since  the  Act  of 
Union  has  been  a  story  of  continuous  struggle  for 
home  rule,  a  story  in  which  internal  dissension, 
factional  strife  and  disaffection  of  all  kinds  have 
operated  against  the  achievement  of  any  per- 
manent reform.  In  its  more  recent  history,  since 
the  defeat  of  Gladstone's  Home  Rule  Bill  in  1893, 
there  have  been  four  political  philosophies  ad- 
vanced. The  Nationalist  party  has  been  declared 
for  home  rule,  home  rule  meaning  the  creation  of 
an  Irish  Parliament  at  Dublin  subservient  to  the 
Imperial  Parliament  at  Westminster.  The  Union- 
ists have  declared  against  home  rule  in  any  form. 
Between  the  Unionists  and  the  Nationalists,  and 
descried    by   both,   there   has    been   a   group   of 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         239 

radical  conservatives  who  put  forward  a  plan  that 
seemed  like  conciliation  to  the  Nationalists  and 
like  rank  heresy  to  the  Unionists.  This  plan  was 
put  forward  in  1904  by  the  Irish  Reform  Associa- 
tion, a  group  of  Unionist  landlords  and  wealthy 
men  of  the  middle  class,  under  the  title  of  "devo- 
lution," a  name  given  it  by  Lord  Dunraven,  the 
president  of  the  association.  This  provided  that 
such  bills  of  a  purely  local  and  those  of  a  semi- 
public  nature  as  Parliament  would  allow,  and  all 
private  bills,  should  devolve  upon  an  Irish  delibera- 
tive chamber  the  constitution  of  which  was  left 
undecided.  It  provided  also  for  the  creation  of  an 
Irish  Financial  Council  of  twenty-four  members? 
half  of  whom  were  to  be  appointed  by  the  Lord 
Lieutenant,  and  the  other  half  elected  by  the 
people.  The  function  of  this  council  was  to  prepare 
and  control  the  Irish  budget,  and  to  dispose  of 
such  funds  as  Parliament  granted.  The  rights  of 
Parliament  were,  however,  safeguarded  in  all  cases. 
This  plan  fell  through,  having  incurred  the  enmity 
of  both  principal  parties.^ 

^  It  seems,  at  the  present  writing  (May  i6th,  1916)  as  if  the 
second  provision  of  the  devolution  policy  will  be  inaugurated 
temporarily,  until  the  conclusion  of  the  war  and  the  promulga- 
tion of  home  rule.  Mr.  Asquith,  on  his  journey  to  Dublin 
after  the  April  insurrection,  is  thought  to  favor  its  adoption. 


24©  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

The  fourth  wing  in  Irish  politics  has  been  com- 
posed of  the  Sinn  Fein  party,  inheritors  of  the 
traditions  of  John  Mitchel  and  of  the  Fenians, 
whose  philosophy  has  been  one  of  passive  resist- 
ance, and  more  recently,  of  physical  force.  The 
movement  was  organized  in  1903  by  Arthur 
Griffith,  a  brilliant  young  journalist  who  advo- 
cated the  adoption  by  Ireland  of  the  policy  insti- 
tuted by  Ferencz  Deak  during  Hungary's  struggle 
for  autonomy  from  1849  to  1867.  The  chief  fea- 
ture of  this  policy  was  a  national  boycott.  The 
Hungarians,  under  the  leadership  of  Deak,  refused 
to  send  representatives  to  the  joint  parliament,  re- 
fused to  pay  taxes  unless  they  were  levied  and  col- 
lected by  Hungarian  officials,  and  instituted  an  edu- 
cational and  administrative  system  independent  of 
that  of  the  government,  and  extended  this  national 
boycott  to  their  economic  life,  refusing  all  trade  rela- 
tions with  Austria.  By  1867  this  policy  brought 
about  a  practical  autonomy  for  Hungary.  Griffith, 
in  seeking  to  apply  it  to  Ireland,  advocated  a  similar 
passive  revolution.  Unfortunately  he  ran  foul  of 
both  the  political  parties  and  the  Church,  and  the 
movement,  which  commenced  by  being  non-partisan, 
adopted  a  party  platform,  and  succeeded  in  electing 
candidates  to  various  offices  in  the  local  government. 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         241 

Their  program  involved  certain  very  radical 
features.  They  wished  the  local  government,  or 
that  part  of  it  which  is  controlled  by  the  Irish 
electorate,  to  sfit  as  a  Parliament  in  Dublin,  and 
together  with  the  Irish  contingent  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  pass  laws  and  recommend  policies  for 
adoption  by  Ireland.  This  proposed  parliament 
would,  of  course,  have  no  constitutional  standing, 
but  would  be  upheld  as  a  moral  authority;  their 
enactments,  although  having  no  effect  as  con- 
stitutional law,  would  have  the  effect  of  moral  law. 
The  entire  Irish  representation  in  the  House  of 
Commons  were  to  resign  from  office,  and  no  suc- 
cessors were  to  be  voted  for.  Among  the  laws  to 
be  passed  was  one  decreeing  a  voluntary  tax  of  a 
penny  to  the  pound,  to  be  employed  in  the  develop- 
ment of  an  educational  system.  An  embargo  upon 
the  importation  of  all  English  goods  was  also  to  be 
passed.  National  courts  of  law,  presided  over  by 
justices  of  the  peace  during  the  hours  in  which  the 
present  courts  were  not  in  session,  were  to  be  estab- 
lished, and  the  present  courts  boycotted.  Irish  was 
to  be  the  official  language  of  the  de  facto  adminis- 
tration. The  English  army  and  navy  were  to  be 
boycotted,  and  the  government  civil  service  and 
constabulary  also.     Finally,  certain  economic  re- 


242  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

forms  were  to  go  into  operation,  of  which  agricul- 
tural cooperation  was  the  chief. 

The  leaders  of  Sinn  Fein  gathered  a  large  fol- 
lowing, which  they  organized  in  secret  societies 
throughout  Ireland.  They  published  a  weekly 
paper  called  at  first  *  The  United  Irishmen,"  and 
later  by  the  name  of  the  movement,  Sinn  Fein, 
which,  literally  translated  from  the  Gaelic,  means 
"Ourselves  Alone"  (ourselves  for  ourselves).  In 
this  journal  appeared  some  of  the  best  writing 
produced  by  the  literary  renascence,  and  its  con- 
tributors numbered  practically  every  important 
writer  that  has  been  mentioned  in  these  pages. 
The  Sinn  Fein  movement  was  in  no  res'pect  a  class 
movement,  and  although  it  drew  its  vigor  from 
the  adherence  of  the  young  intellectuals,  it  was  a 
popular  movement  with  a  popular  following,  the 
first  of  whose  tenets  Was  the  fundamental  equality 
of  all  men  and  their  moral  equivalence  in  the  strug- 
gle to  bring  about  Irish  freedom.  The  movement, 
in  theory  at  least,  may  be  compared  to  that  of  the 
I.  A.  O.  S.  The  philosophy  fundamental  in  both 
has  been  that  of  Irish  regeneration  by  Irishmen 
through  cooperative  action  and  without  external 
aid.  The  point  wherein  the  movements  have  dif- 
fered is  that  Sinn  Fein  has  desired  a  complete  sever- 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         243 

ance  from  all  things  English,  believing  that  Ireland 
must  achieve  constitutional  independence  by  a  re- 
nunciation of  all  dependence,  economic,  administra- 
tive, intellectual,  upon  England,  while  the  I.  A.O.  S. 
has  labored,  without  any  ulterior  political  philoso- 
phy, to  establish  a  new  social  and  economic  order. 

In  1913,  under  the  direction  of  the  Irish  Trans- 
port Union,  a  strike  of  farm-laborers  was  organized 
which  threatened  to  cripple  the  work  of  the  co- 
operative movement.  At  the  same  time,  a  strike 
was  organized  in  Dublin.  In  Dublin  the  strike 
became  a  lockout  inaugurated  by  the  federated  em- 
ployers, who  proceeded  to  starve  out  the  strikers. 
James  Larkin  organized  the  workers  to  resist 
the  methods  of  the  employers.  In  this  he  was 
supported  by  Sinn  Fein,  and  by  a  group  of  young 
poets  and  writers  who  were  revolutionary  in  their 
thinking.  Larkin  himself  is  a  syndicalist,  a  fiery 
orator,  and  possesses  a  large  personal  follow- 
ing, which  he  brought  into  the  Sinn  Fein  move- 
ment. Not  only  the  whole  of  Ireland,  but  most 
of  Great  Britain  was  agitated  by  the  horror  of 
the  situation  in  Dublin.  A  monster  meeting  was 
organized  at  Albert  Hall  in  London,  at  which 
George  Bernard  Shaw  and  A.  E.,  who  had  been 
active  in  the  cause  of  the  workers,  both  spoke. 


244  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

Finally,  the  back  of  the  lockout  was  broken,  and 
both  the  cooperative  movement  and  Sinn  Fein  had 
gained  adherents  by  the  stand  which  they  had  taken. 
Larkin  and  James  Connolly,  a  labor  leader  and  au- 
thor, joined  the  latter  movement,  and  the  doctrines 
of  Sinn  Fein  began  to  take  on  a  syndicalist  tone. 

In  the  meanwhile  the  Home  Rule  bill  had  been 
discussed  in  the  House.  The  radical  Unionist 
forces  and  the  Orange  associations  of  Ulster 
threatened  sedition  if  Home  Rule  became  an 
accomplished  fact.  Organizers  were  sent  from 
England  to  Ulster  to  foment  the  feeling  against 
the  bill.  By  191 1,  a  provisional  government  for 
Ulster  with  Sir  Edward  Carson  at  its  head,  had 
been  arranged  for.  The  government  negotiated 
with  Sir  Edward  Carson,  but  received  no  as- 
surances. Money  was  subscribed  to  finance  the 
rebellion  in  Ulster,  and  arms  were  imported  un- 
hindered by  the  British  government.  Then  the 
Home  Rule  bill  was  passed.  Sir  Edward  Carson 
refused  any  further  negotiations  with  the  British 
government,  and  troops  were  sent  into  Ulster. 
This  was  in  1914.  The  King  intervened  after 
troops  had  been  sent,  and  several  changes  were 
made  in  the  personnel  of  the  commanding  staff. 
Civil  war  threatened  to  break  out  at  any  moment. 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         245 

Then,  when  it  seemed  that  by  complete  inactivity, 
the  government  had  repudiated  its  promise  to 
uphold  the  law,  the  Irish  Volunteers,  who  had 
been  organized  in  December,  191 3,  began  to  im- 
port arms  into  Ireland.  John  Redmond,  at  the 
instigation  of  Mr.  Asquith  and  the  ministry,  had 
taken  control  of  the  Volunteers,  who  thus  be- 
came identified  with  the  Nationalist  party.  The 
government  sought  to  prevent  the  importation 
of  arms  into  Dublin,  although  allowing,  and  even 
conniving  in,  their  importation  into  Ulster.  Sol- 
diers were  sent  to  Dalkey,  a  suburb  of  Dublin,  to 
prevent  the  landing  of  arms.  On  their  way  there, 
as  was  natural,  they  attracted  a  crowd  of  men, 
women  and  children.  Some  few  rowdies  took  the 
opportunity  to  throw  stones  at  the  troops.  The 
troops,  just  as  they  had  during  the  strike  of  1913, 
fired  on  the  crowd,  killing  several  women  and 
children.  A  mutiny  broke  out  among  the  gar- 
rison at  Camp  Curragh,  near  Dublin.  And  just 
then  the  Great  War  beat  down  upon  the  world. 

In  June,  1914,  the  Irish  Volunteers  published 
the  following  manifesto: — 

*^ Fellow  Countrymen^ 

It  is  close  upon  seven  months  since  the  Irish  Volun- 
teers were  called  into  being  by  a  manifesto  issued  on 


246  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

the  29th  November,  1913,  in  the  name  of  the  Pro- 
visional Body,  who  now  make  this  further  appeal  to 
the  courage  and  patriotism  of  Irishmen. 

The  time  is  now  opportune.  To  that  first  appeal  a 
splendid  response  has  been  given  by  the  youth  and 
manhood  of  Ireland. 

The  call  to  Irishmen  to  form  an  army  of  national 
defence  against  aggression,  from  whatever  quarter  it 
might  come,  and  to  take  upon  themselves  the  defence 
of  those  rights  and  liberties  common  to  all  the  people 
of  Ireland,  has  not  fallen  on  deaf  ears  or  cold  hearts. 

The  right  of  a  free  people  to  carry  arms  in  defence  of 
their  freedom  is  an  elementary  part  of  political  liberty. 
The  denial  of  that  right  is  a  denial  of  political  liberty 
and  consistent  only  with  a  despotic  form  of  govern- 
ment.   They  have  rights  who  dare  maintain  them. 

The  demand  of  the  Irish  people  is  unmistakable. 
They  demand  this  elementary  right  of  free  men — the 
right  to  place  arms  in  the  hands  of  the  organized  and 
disciplined  defenders  of  their  liberty. 

Ireland  today  possesses  an  army  of  men  actuated 
by  a  common  spirit  of  patriotism,  daily  acquiring  and 
applying  habits  of  disciplined  and  concerted  action, 
and  rapidly  fitting  themselves  to  bear  arms. 

We  denounce  as  hostile  to  our  liberty,  civic  as  well 
as  national,  the  denial  of  this  right. 

And,  further,  since  the  action  of  the  Government 
places  in  the  way  of  Irishmen  favorable  to  a  national 
autonomy  obstacles  which  admittedly  are  inoperative 
in  the  case  of  those  opposed  to  the  policy  of  Irish  self 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         247 

government,  we  urge  and  demand,  through  every 
representative  voice  in  Ireland,  the  immediate  with- 
drawal of  the  Proclamation  prohibiting  the  import  of 
arms  into  Ireland. 

We  are  glad  to  recognize  that  the  time  has  come 
when  the  members  of  the  Irish  Parliamentary  Party, 
with  Mr.  John  Redmond  at  its  head,  have  been  able, 
owing  to  the  development  of  the  Irish  Volunteer  organi- 
zation on  sound  and  well-defined  national  lines,  to 
associate  themselves  by  public  declaration  with  a  work 
which  the  nation  has  spontaneously  taken  in  hand.i 
Their  accession  is  all  the  more  welcome  since,  fromi 
the  outset  of  the  Irish  Volunteer  movement,  we  have 
made  it  our  constant  aim  to  bring  about  a  whole  and 
sincere  unity  of  the  Irish  people  on  the  ground  of 
national  freedom.  In  that  spirit,  too,  we  look  forward 
with  eager  hope  to  the  day  when  the  minority  of  our 
fellow-countrymen,  still  apparently  separated  from  us 
in  affection,  will  be  joined  hand  in  hand  with  the  major- 
ity, in  a  union  within  which  the  rights  and  liberties 
common  to  all  the  people  of  Ireland  will  be  sacred  to 
all,  and  will  be  a  trust  to  be  defended  by  the  arms  and 
lives  of  all  Irishmen. 

EoiN  MacNeill, 
L.  J.  Kettle, 

Hon.  Sees. 
Provisional  Executive J'^ 

On  September  19th,  1914,  the  Home  Rule  bill 
was  signed  and  became  binding  law,  but  its  opera- 


248  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

tion  was  postponed  until  after  the  duration  of  the 
war.  In  the  meanwhile,  John  Redmond  at- 
tempted to  utilize  the  Irish  Volunteers  in  recruit- 
ing for  the  English  army.  The  Volunteers  then 
became  an  organization  existing  for  purely  na- 
tional purposes.  They  disclaimed  Redmond,  and 
went  ahead  with  their  preparations. 

In  May  of  last  year,  Sir  Edward  Carson,  who 
had  been  in  open  rebellion  against  the  Imperial 
Government,  was  appointed  attorney  general, 
and  became  a  member  of  the  Cabinet.  No 
greater  farce,  from  the  point  of  view  of  Ireland, 
could  have  possibly  come  about.  Either  the 
government  entrusted  the  prosecution  of  the  law 
to  an  acknowledged  law-breaker,  or,  if  Sir  Edward 
were  not  a  criminal,  the  government  had  openly 
connived  with  the  uprisings  in  Belfast. 

The  marching  of  armed  Ulster  Volunteers 
through  Belfast,  and  the  meeting  there  of  a  pro- 
visional government;  the  killing  of  four  people 
and  wounding  of  sixty  others  by  troops  in  Dublin, 
in  an  attempt  to  prevent  the  landing  of  arms;  the 
suspension  of  the  Home  Rule  bill;  the  appoint- 
ment of  Sir  Edward  Carson  as  a  minister;  the 
refusal  of  the  English  government  to  permit  the 
emigration  of  Irishmen  of  military  age,  and  the 


SOCIAL  AND    ECONOMIC  REFORM       249 

illiberal  prosecution  of  the  "Defense  of  the  Realm" 
Act  in  Ireland  convinced  the  young  Irishmen  that 
England's  promises  to  Ireland  were  invalid. 

What  happened  then  is  history  too  recent  to 
require  discussion. 

A  revolution  took  place  in  Ireland.  Fighting 
obtained  in  Dublin  from  April  21st  to  May  ist. 
Sir  Roger  Casement,  who  at  the  outbreak  of  war 
had  gone  to  the  United  States,  repudiating  his 
British  title,  and  from  there  to  Berlin,  landed  at 
Tralee,  and  was  promptly  captured  by  the  British 
and  taken  to  London  as  a  traitor.  A  provisional 
government  was  declared  in  Ireland,  with  P.  H. 
Pearse  as  provisional  president  of  the  Irish  Re- 
public. Troops  were  hastened  to  Dublin  from 
England,  and  a  gunboat  came  up  the  Liffey  and 
shelled  Liberty  Hall,  the  headquarters  of  the 
Sinn  Fein  movement.  On  April  30th,  a  proclama- 
tion advising  all  rebels  to  surrender  was  issued  by 
the  provisional  president,  P.  H.  Pearse.  The 
leaders  surrendered  the  following  day,  and  over  a 
thousand  prisoners  were  taken.  Fourteen  of  the 
rebel  leaders  were  shot  in  Dublin  Castle  yard  as 
traitors.  Countess  Markievicz,  the  sister  of  Miss 
Eva  Gore-Booth,  the  poetess,  was  ordered  to  hard 
penal   servitude  for  life.    Thomas  MacDonagh, 


2SO  THE  CELTIC  DAWN 

poet,  critic  and  playwright,  P.  H.  Pearse,  lawyer, 
Gaelic  scholar  and  head  master  of  St.  Enda's 
School,  F.  Sheeby  Skeffington,  author  and  lec- 
turer, James  Connolly,  labor  leader  and  author  of 
a  notable  economic  study,  "Labor  in  Irish  His- 
tory," and  Joseph  Plunkett,  poet,  were  all  shot. 
Professor  Eoin  MacNeill,  of  the  National  Uni- 
versity, a  notable  Gaelic  scholar,  was  also  cap- 
tured. 

Followed  the  resignations  of  Lord  Wimborne, 
Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  and  Augustine  Bir- 
rell,  chief  secretary.  Followed  also  the  trip  of 
Mr.  Asquith  to  Dublin,  and  his  review  of  the 
Irish  situation. 

What  has  been  accomplished.''  As  a  rebellion, 
the  insurrection  in  Ireland  has  been  a  failure.  It 
has  not  brought  Ireland  independence  in  any  but 
a  qualified  degree.  It  has  robbed  the  young  Ire- 
land movement  of  today  of  many  of  its  finest 
and  keenest  intellects. 

It  was,  undoubtedly,  a  chimeric  scheme,  the 
expression  of  a  dream  and  of  an  aspiration  that 
have  never  been  quiescent  since  the  Union.  It 
was  also,  to  a  certain  extent,  the  expression  of  the 
neo-Celtic  philosophy  as  that  is  understood  today, 
seeking  a  refuge  from  life  not  in  art,  but  in  action. 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  REFORM         251 

It  made  heroes,  and  it  integrated,  even  more 
strongly  than  before,  the  race  consciousness  that 
the  renascence  in  Ireland  has  developed.  What 
the  final  result  may  be,  cannot,  at  this  moment, 
be  determined.  But  the  rebellion,  as  the  expres- 
sion of  a  new  "Young  Ireland"  movement,  has 
been  the  result  of  one  phase  of  the  renascence  that 
has  come  over  Ireland  during  the  past  twenty-six 
years. 

The  period  of  the  renascence  may  justly  be  said 
to  close  with  the  rebellion.  What  may  come 
afterward  will  be  the  fruit  reaped  from  the  har- 
vest that  the  renascence  has  sowed.  For  it  has 
borne  a  new  thought,  a  new  literature,  a  new 
economy,  a  new  social  philosophy,  even  a  new 
nation  in  Ireland. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


THE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  a  few 
of  the  Macmillan  books  on  kindred  subjects 


ST.  JOHN  G.  ERVINE'S  NEW  NOVEL 


Changing  Winds 

By  ST.  JOHN  G.  ERVINE 

Author  of  Mrs.  Martin*s  Man,  Alice  and  A  Family,  etc. 

One  of  the  most  popular  stories  of  recent  times 
was  St.  John  G.  Ervine's  Mrs.  Martin's  Man.  With 
its  publication  a  short  time  ago,  a  new  novelist  of 
distinct  power  and  originality  was  heralded.  Since 
that  book  Mr.  Ervine  has  issued  Alice  and  A  Family, 
a  tale  strikingly  different  in  idea  and  treatment  and 
yet  not  a  bit  less  masterly,  and  one  or  two  volumes 
of  plays,  all  of  which  have  gone  to  establish  him 
firmly  in  modern  letters.  His  new  book  has  been 
awaited  with  more  than  average  interest.  It  is 
entitled  Changing  Winds  and  is  said  to  be  as  admir- 
able a  piece  of  work  both  in  its  character  drawing 
and  in  theme  as  anything  its  author  has  yet  done. 


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THE  WORKS  OF  SIR  RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 

Bolpur  Edition 

The  Hungry  Stones  and  Other  Stories 

Fruit-Gathering 

Chitra :  A  Play  in  one  act 

The  Crescent  Moon  :  Child  Poems 

The  Gardener :  Love  Poems 

Gitanjali :  Religious  Poems 

The  King  of  the  Dark  Chamber :  A  Play 

Songs  of  Kabir 

Sadhana :  The  Realization  of  Life 

The  Post  Office :  A  Play 

Each  volume  decoraUd  cloth,  $i.SO;  leather,  $2.00 

This  new  edition  of  the  works  of  Rabindranath 
Tagore  will  recommend  itself  to  those  who  desire 
to  possess  the  various  poems  and  plays  of  the  great 
Hindu  writer  in  the  best  possible  printings  and  bind- 
ings. Great  care  has  been  taken  with  the  physical 
appearance  of  the  books.  In  addition  to  the  special 
design  that  has  been  made  for  the  cover,  there  are 
special  end  papers  and  decorated  title  pages  in  each 
book.  Altogether  this  edition  promises  to  become 
the  standard  one  of  this  distinguished  poet  and  seer. 


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The   Brook   Kerith 

By  GEORGE   MOORE 


$f'JO 


This  novel  deals  with  the  hfe  of  Jesus.  As  a  vivid  presen- 
tation of  contemporary  life  and  thought  and  a  striking  commen- 
tary on  the  New  Testament  narratives,  it  is  a  book  of  real 
historical  value.  The  author  has  presented  a  most  revolution- 
ary interpretation  of  the  founder  of  Christianity,  especially  as 
regards  his  own  view  of  his  mission  and  doctrines,  setting  forth 
a  convincing  human  story  of  Jesus'  life  in  its  actual  setting. 

"  In  7%<?  Brook  Kerith,  George  Moore  employs  his  finest  art 
in  an  audacious  way.  He  invokes  ...  as  does  Flaubert  in 
Salammbo,  a  vanished  land,  a  vanished  civilization  ...  in  a 
style  that  is  artistically  beautiful.  Never  has  he  written  with 
such  sustained  power,  intensity  and  nobility  of  phrasing,  such 
finely  tempered,  modulating  prose."  —  New  York  Sun. 

•*  He  vitahzes  Jesus,  Paul,  Joseph  and  all  his  characters  .  .  . 
touches  the  furtherest  imaginative  reaches  ...  in  many  re- 
spects even  more  plausible  than  the  accepted  story."  —  Boston 
Transcript. 

"  A  compelling  novel  ...  a  remarkable  literary  achieve- 
ment .  .  .  nothing  George  Moore  has  written  has  such  sustamed 
beauty  and  dignity." —  The  Bookman. 


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Mr.  Britling  Sees  It  Through 

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of  emotional  literature.  .  .  .  Nothing  could  express  the  whole, 
momentous  situation  in  England  and  in  the  United  States  in  so 
few  words  and  such  convincing  tone.  .  .  .  For  clear  thinking 
and  strong  feeling,  the  finest  picture  of  the  crises  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  world  that  has  yet  been  produced."  —  Philadelphia  Public 
Ledger. 

"  Not  only  Mr.  Wells'  best  book,  but  the  best  book  so  far 
published  concerning  the  war." —  Chicago  Tribune. 

*'  The  most  thoughtfully  and  carefully  worked-out  book  Mr. 
Wells  has  given  us  for  many  a  year.  ...  A  veritable  cross- 
section  of  contemporary  English  life  .  .  .  admirable,  full  of 
color  and  utterly  convincing."  —  JVew  York  Times. 

"  A  war  epic.  ...  To  read  it  is  to  grasp,  as  perhaps  never 
before,  the  state  of  a£Eairs  among  those  to  whom  war  is  the 
actual  order  of  the  day.  Impressive,  true,  tender,  ...  in- 
finitely moving  and  potent." —  Chicago  Tribune. 

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compare."  —  London  Times. 


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THE  WORKS  OF  WILLIAM  BUTLER  YEATS 

Responsibilities  Oust  Published) 

Under  the  title  of  Responsibilities,  Mr.  Yeats  brings  together  some  of  his 
recent  poems.  It  is  as  a  poet  that  the  majority  of  people  like  to  think  of 
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Lyrical  and  Dramatic  Poems 

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cluded in  this  volume  are:  "The  Countess  Cathleen,"  "The  Land  of 
Heart's  Desire,"  "The  Shadowy  Waters,"  "On  Baile's  Strand,"  "The 
King's  Threshold,"  and  "  Deirdre." 

Reveries  over  Childhood  and  Youth 

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the  sensitive,  imaginative  youth  of  the  Irish  poet." — New  York  Times. 

Illustrated,  ^2.cx} 

The  Green  Helmet  and  Other  Poems 

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Stories  of  Red  Hanrahan,  The  Secret  Rose,  Rose 
Alchemica 

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The  Cutting  of  an  Agate 

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lar theatre;  and  this  art  may  seem  to  practical  men  .  .  .  of  no  more 
account  than  the  shaping  of  an  agate."  $1.50 

The  Celtic  Twilight 

A  collection  of  tales  from  Irish  life  and  of  Irish  fancy,  retold  from  peasants' 
stories  with  no  additions  except  an  occasional  comment.  ^I-SO 

The  Hour  Glass  and  Other  Plays 

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other  plays  in  the  volume  makes  a  representative  collection.  $1.25 

Ideas  of  Good  and  Evil 

Essays  on  art  and  life  which  set  forth  much  of  Mr.  Yeats'  philosophy, 
love  of  beauty,  hope  for  Ireland,  and  Irish  artistic  achievement.        ^1.50 

Unicom  From  the  Stars  and  Other  Plays    By  William 

Butler  Yeats  and  Lady  Gregory 

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Nation.  $1.50 

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THE  WORKS  OF  JAMES  STEPHENS 

"A  genuine  Irish  genius,  one  in  whose  heart  there  boils 
and  bubbles  fantasy  and  tears,  the  irony  that  burns,  and 
a  bitter-sweet  humor  that  is  mad." — James  Huneker. 

Green  Branches 

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"day  by  day  during  the  Insurrection  that  followed  Holy  Week.  They  are 
not  the  history  of  the  uprising  but  rather  ...  a  statement  of  what 
passed  in  one  quarter  of  Dublin  and  the  gathering  together  of  the  rumor  and 
tension  which  had  to  serve  the  people  of  that  city  in  lieu  of  news."       $1.25 

The  Rocky  Road  to  Dublin 

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as  the  song  of  a  hermit  thrush." — Brooklyn  Eagle,  $1.00 

Songs  From  the  Clay 

"One  hears  sudden,  swift  laughter,  lusty  vagabonds  singing  by  the  hedge- 
rows, the  stirring  of  invisible  angelic  wings,  and  the  sardonic  chuckles  of 
malevolent  imps.  .  .  ,  You  can  afford  to  miss  much  poetry,  but  not 
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Insurrections 

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The  Hill  of  Vision 

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place  it  in  spirit  near  to  the  work  of  William  Blake." — Literary  Digest.  ^1.25 

The  Demi-Gods 

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and  chuckles,  and  tender,  half-sorrowful  smiles." — Chicago  Herald.    $1.30 

The  Crock  of  Gold 

"There  is  not  another  book  like  'The  Crock  of  Gold'  in  English  literature. 
There  are  many  books  like  pieces  of  it,  but  the  humor  and  the  style — these 
things  are  Mr.  Stephens'  own  peculiar  gift." — The  London  Standard.     ^1.25 

Here  Are  Ladies 

"As  in  'The  Crock  of  Gold,'  here  again  we  have  humor  of  a  fresh  and 
delightful  quality,  whimsy  and  philosophy,  poetry  and  romance,  all 
squared  up  with  life,  and  every  page  reflecting  one  of  the  most  original 
and  interesting  personalities  that  has  recently  appeared  in  literature." 
—Netv  York  Globe.  $1.25 

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^^"?*^  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  UBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


(un  5  6  3 


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